773,000 years old: Oldest human fossils discovered in Morocco

Fossils found in a Moroccan cave suggest a transitional human lineage 773,000 years ago, shedding light on the origins of Homo sapiens.

Fossilized bones and teeth discovered in a Moroccan cave, dating back 773,000 years, provide a deeper understanding of the emergence of the Homo sapiens lineage, which scientists believe may have been the ancestors of our human race.

The researchers said the fossils, which are the lower jawbones of two adults and a small child, as well as teeth, a femur and some vertebrae, were discovered in a cave called " Homo sapiens Cave " at a site in Casablanca .

The cave appears to have been a den for predators, as the femur bears bite marks indicating that the person may have been hunted or that hyenas fed on his body.

The researchers said the most plausible explanation is that these fossils represent an evolved form of the ancient lineage " Homo erectus " that first appeared about 1.9 million years ago in Africa and later spread to Europe and Asia.

The bones and teeth show a mix of primitive and more recent characteristics and fill a gap in the African fossil record from about 1 million to 600,000 years ago.

 Researchers say the fossils may represent an African population that existed shortly before the evolutionary split of lineages that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa and two other human-like beings, Neanderthals and Denisovans , who inhabited Eurasia.

“I would be cautious about classifying it as the ‘last common ancestor,’ but it is reasonably close to the lineages from which the African lineages, Homo sapiens, and the Eurasian lineages, Neanderthals and Denisovans, eventually emerged,” said Jean-Jacques Aublain, a paleoanthropologist at the Collège de France in Paris and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Oblan is the lead author of the study published Wednesday in the scientific journal "Nature".

The oldest known fossils of the human-like creature "Homo sapiens" and dating back to about 315,000 years ago were also found in Morocco at an archaeological site called Jebel Irhoud.