773-тысячелетние марокканские ископаемые освещают раннюю эволюцию человека

"...The remains come from Thomas Quarry I, and a new analysis pins them to about 773,000 years ago, give or take 4,000 years. That level of precision is rare for fossils this old, and it pulls you closer to a moment near the split that later led to modern humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans...."

"...You can feel the patience behind that kind of effort...."

"...That slow work revealed an unusual cave sequence inside Thomas Quarry I, in an area known as the 'Grotte à Hominidés.' The setting matters because the fossils did not come from a loose or mixed layer. They came from sediments that stayed in order...."

"...The discoveries build on more than three decades of fieldwork under the Moroccan-French program 'Préhistoire de Casablanca.'..."

"...The fossils are almost the same age as the Gran Dolina hominins, and they are older than later Middle Pleistocene fossils tied to Neandertals and Denisovans. They are also far older than the earliest Homo sapiens remains at Jebel Irhoud, by roughly 500,000 years, according to the researchers...."

"...The fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés may be the best candidates we currently have for African populations lying near the root of this shared ancestry, thus reinforcing the view of a deep African origin for our species...."