Paleoanthropologists were stunned to discover the world's oldest human fossil, in a Moroccan cave. The fossil remains from Jebel Irhoud date back to a remarkable 300,000 BC, pushing back the history of the human race by some 100,000 years.
human?
“This stuff is a time and a half older than anything else put forward as H. sapiens,” said baffled boffin John Fleagle of the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
not human?
However, there's doubt about whether the fossil is actually human, its teeth and jawline align with Homo Sapiens but its cranium is elongated, suggesting a different kind of brain than those humans enjoy today.
a different brain
Still, whether human or humanlike, the Moroccan fossil is important. “It's placed at a critical time period when the earliest members of our species could have evolved, and they’re critical for better understanding the patterns of physical and behavioral evolution," says Zeray Alemseged from the University of Chicago.
Moroccan Fossil
As debate simmers over the ancient Moroccan fossil, the quest for the origin of our species continues.
Explorers Club forever,
LSP
