Fossils found in Morocco that could belong to a close ancestor of 'Homo sapiens'

BarcelonaThe African, rather than Eurasian, origin ofHomo sapiens The theory of Africa as the birthplace of humankind is gaining traction following the description and dating of fossil remains found at a site in Casablanca, Morocco, which provide new evidence. This is the conclusion of a study led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and published this Wednesday in the magazine Nature

Scientists believe that the last common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovan hominins (named after the Siberian caves where they were found) lived between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago, but the main question is where the unknown goes. Discoveries like theHomo antecessor The fossils found in the Atapuerca mountains (Burgos, Spain), dating back 800,000 years, suggested that this ancestral link occurred in Europe. However, fossils discovered in Morocco reinforce the theory that the hominid that acted as a link between Neanderthals and Cuvier's hominins originated in Africa. As reported by EFE, the remains described include a nearly complete adult mandible, the second half of an adult mandible, a juvenile mandible, numerous teeth, and vertebrae. All the remains were unearthed in 2008 in a cave at the Thomas Quarry I site in Casablanca. The area surrounding the Moroccan city has provided ideal conditions for the preservation of Pleistocene fossils and archaeological remains for thousands of years. Researchers have studied both the fossil remains and the surrounding sediments using high-resolution magnetostratigraphic dating, concluding that they date back approximately 773,000 years, explains one of the authors, Asier Gómez, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country, to EFE. Gómez has been part of the large international and multidisciplinary team that has been responsible for describing the remains. Specifically, he has studied the cervical and thoracic vertebrae found and compared them with other similar hominid remains previously studied. The key, he explains, is that the Casablanca fossils are morphologically distinct fromHomo antecessor found in Atapuerca, which implies the existence of a regional differentiation between Europe and North Africa from the end of the first Pleistocene (between 1.8 million and 780,000 years ago).

The Casablanca remains show a mixture of ancient traits, observed in species such as theHomo erectusand other modern ones, which are found in theHomo sapiens and Neanderthals. This indicates that they correspond to the period when Eurasian and African human lineages began to differentiate at the end of the Early Pleistocene. Gómez emphasizes that the discovery "helps us better understand what the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Sepians was like, and highlights the split between them, which must have occurred more than 800,000 years ago." The researcher from the Geology Department at the University of the Basque Country points out that the highly precise description they have achieved of the remains has been possible not only thanks to new technologies, but also to the multidisciplinary nature of the research, which has included experts in numerous scientific fields, something "fundamental for understanding human evolution."

"This study fills a key gap in the African record right near the interval where genetics places the split between the lineage that will eventually become theHomo sapiens "And the Neanderthal," notes Juan Ignacio Morales, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution. "The hominins of Casablanca could be understood, in general terms, as an African equivalent ofHomo antecessor, in the sense that both would represent evolved forms ofHomo erectus at two ends of the Mediterranean at similar times, with an anatomy that combines primitive and modern features,” Morales explains. The difference is that “l’Homo antecessor (Atapuerca) shows features that, as a whole, place it closer to the Eurasian Neanderthal trajectory, while that of Casablanca is interpreted as closer to the African populations that would lead to Homo sapiens",” Morales adds. The new research, experts in this scientific field agree, reinforces the idea that regional differentiation between Europe and North Africa began in the Early Pleistocene and focuses on the Maghreb as a key region for understanding this phase of diversification.