A new study published in Nature reinforces the idea that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. This is based on a set of fossils unearthed in a Moroccan cave that date to 773,000 years ago, just around the time when our evolutionary family tree split into what would become Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.
The cave itself, known as Grotte à Hominidés, is located in Casablanca. It looks like it was more of a hangout for predators than a place where early Homo sapiens ever lived. Originally excavated in 1969, it’s been an on-again, off-again hub of archaeological digging.
A research team recently uncovered vertebrae, teeth, jaw fragments, and a femur covered in bite marks, suggesting its owner had at least one very bad day.
New Fossils in Morocco May Change What We Know About Humanity’s Origins
As CNN reports, Scientists were able to date the fossils precisely by matching the surrounding sediment to the last major reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, which occurred… 773,000 years ago. That technique finally resolved the long-standing mystery of how old these mysterious bones really were.
While researchers have more or less settled on Africa as the birthplace of modern humans, there was a big gap in Africa’s fossil record during the period when Homo sapiens and their closest relatives diverged around 550,000 to 750,000 years ago.
There was some speculation that fossils found in Spain belonging to another offshoot of ancient humans, Homo antecessor, suggested that this evolutionary split occurred outside Africa, with humans eventually migrating back to Africa at a later point.
The fossils found in Casablanca help us close that knowledge gap, offering some of the strongest evidence yet that Africa is still where we all came from.
The Moroccan remains show a mix of traits from a variety of evolutionary cousins, including Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and even modern humans. They’re not identical, meaning that even populations that were closely related were starting to evolutionarily diverge.
There’s still a lot to learn about where we came from and how we migrated across the globe, but with discoveries like this, we are one giant step closer to completing the puzzle.
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