An international team of researchers, led by Pr Jean-Jacques Hublin, David Lefèvre (Université Paul-Valéry de Montpellier), Giovanni Muttoni (University of Milan) and Abderrahim Mohib (Institut national des sciences de l'archéologie et du patrimoine du Maroc), has published an articlein Nature reporting on the analysis of new human fossils discovered in the Grotte à Hominidés within the Thomas quarry I, near Casablanca (Morocco).
These fossils shed new light on a key period in human evolution, some 773 000 years ago. Thanks to precise dating based on the recording of the Earth's magnetic field, these remains can be placed with great chronological reliability in the early history of human populations in North Africa.
The material studied includes several human mandibles, including those of two adults and a child, as well as dental and post-cranial remains. The ensemble documents human populations that were still poorly known in this pivotal period between the ancient forms of the genus Homo and more recent lineages.
These discoveries fill an important gap in the African fossil record, at a time when paleogenetic data place the divergence between the African lineage leading to Homo sapiens and the Eurasian lineages that gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans. The fossils show an original combination of primitive and more evolved characters, testifying to human populations close to this phase of divergence.
They thus confirm the antiquity and depth of our species' African roots, while underlining the key role of North Africa in the major stages of human evolution.
