Researchers have uncovered what are believed to be the oldest known human fossils in Morocco, with remains dated to approximately 773,000 years ago, offering new insight into the early evolutionary path that eventually led to modern humans.
The discovery consists of fossilized jawbones from two adults and a young child, along with teeth, a thigh bone and several vertebrae. The remains were found in a cave near the city of Casablanca, at a site known to researchers as the “Hominin Cave”.
Scientists say the cave appears to have once served as a den for large predators. Bite marks on the thigh bone suggest the individual may have been hunted or that the body was later scavenged by hyenas.
According to the research team, the fossils most likely belong to an advanced form of Homo erectus, an ancient human ancestor that first emerged in Africa around 1.9 million years ago before spreading into Europe and Asia. The remains show a combination of primitive and more modern anatomical features, helping to fill a major gap in the African fossil record between one million and 600,000 years ago.
The findings suggest the fossils may represent an African population that lived shortly before the evolutionary split that gave rise to Homo sapiens in Africa, as well as Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia.
Lead author Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Collège de France and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said the remains should be interpreted cautiously but are closely related to the lineages that later produced modern humans and their closest extinct relatives.
The study was published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.
Morocco has previously yielded some of the oldest known fossils of early Homo sapiens, including remains dated to about 315,000 years ago at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud. Together, these discoveries underline North Africa’s central role in the deep history of human evolution.
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