[Igor Antunov]

Remains from Morocco dated to 315,000 years ago push back our species' origins by 100,000 years — and suggest we didn't evolve only in East Africa.

Researchers say that they have found the oldest Homo sapiens remains on record in an improbable place: Morocco.

At an archaeological site near the Atlantic coast, finds of skull, face and jaw bones identified as being from early members of our species have been dated to about 315,000 years ago. That indicates H. sapiens appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than thought: most researchers have placed the origins of our species in East Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The finds, which are published on 7 June in Nature1, 2, do not mean that H. sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species' earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.

“Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a ‘Garden of Eden’ that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Now, “I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa — and it’s a big, big garden.” Hublin was one of the leaders of the decade-long excavation at the Moroccan site, called Jebel Irhoud.

http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo- ... ry-1.22114

More to read at link. We wuz not kangz it seems. East Africa may be a dud origin site.

[ThirdTerm]

Fossil evidence points to an African origin of Homo sapiens from a group called either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. However, the exact place and time of emergence of H. sapiens remain obscure because the fossil record is scarce and the chronological age of many key specimens remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether the present day ‘modern’ morphology rapidly emerged approximately 200 thousand years ago (ka) among earlier representatives of H. sapiens1 or evolved gradually over the last 400 thousand years2. Here we report newly discovered human fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and interpret the affinities of the hominins from this site with other archaic and recent human groups. We identified a mosaic of features including facial, mandibular and dental morphology that aligns the Jebel Irhoud material with early or recent anatomically modern humans and more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. In combination with an age of 315 ± 34 thousand years (as determined by thermoluminescence dating)3, this evidence makes Jebel Irhoud the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site that documents early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology were established. Furthermore, it shows that the evolutionary processes behind the emergence of H. sapiens involved the whole African continent.
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v ... 22336.html

Figure 3: Comparative shape analysis.

The problem with the new study by Hublin et al. (2017) is that the team failed to extract DNA from the fossils, only relying on facial, mandibular and dental morphology. Shape analysis methods are not as accurate as DNA analysis. Moreover, the dating method used is thermoluminescence, which dates the last time items like ceramics were heated. I don't know if it's the right method to date the oldest human remains as it cannot be used to date items more than 10,000 years old with accuracy. A genetic study previously done by Poznik et al. (2013) found that the coalescence, or origin, of the human Y chromosome and mitochondria both occurred approximately between 120 and 156 thousand years ago.

Hublin says his team tried and failed to obtain DNA from the Jebel Irhoud bones. A genomic analysis could have clearly established whether the remains lie on the lineage that leads to modern humans.

Palaeontologist Jeffrey Schwartz, at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says the new finds are important — but he is not convinced that they should be considered H. sapiens. Too many different-looking fossils have been lumped together under the species, he thinks, complicating efforts to interpret new fossils and to come up with scenarios on how, when and where our species emerged.

“Homo sapiens, despite being so well known, was a species without a past until now,” says María Martínon-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College London, noting the scarcity of fossils linked to human origins in Africa. But the lack of features that, she says, define our species — such as a prominent chin and forehead — convince her that the Jebel Irhoud remains should not be considered H. sapiens.

https://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo ... ry-1.22114

[stephen50right]

It is quite interesting how anthropologists piece together the fossil record, especially since it's likely that way less than 1% of all fossils have so far been found. Lots more great discoveries to be made, to learn about our past.