April 20, 2024

Motemapembe

The Internet Generation

What Is the Oldest Human Fossil?

Humans, as we understand them, basically have a rather historical legacy on this earth. Anthropologists usually refer to any species in the genus Homo as human. 

The oldest reliably labeled fossils belonging to the genus Homo day again to a minimal about two million several years ago. They belong to H. habilis, a variety of historical hominin that experts classify as the initially of our genus, and which could have led to H. erectus, a single of our direct ancestors.

For the oldest fossils of H. sapiens, we must vacation to Morocco, to a web-site identified as Jebel Irhoud. Archaeologists not too long ago dated H. sapiens fossils found there to close to 315,000 several years ago. The come across drastically prolonged our species’ timeline, as the preceding oldest H. sapiens fossils were being close to 200,000 several years aged.

These, of study course, are just the oldest fossils we have found yet. There could be other, even much more historical, human fossils out there. And the dates experts give often arrive with a evaluate of uncertainty, primarily as fossils get more mature. That 315,000-calendar year-aged estimate could be off by hundreds of several years. There could even be other species in the genus Homo that we haven’t found yet, pushing our ancestry even even further again in time.


This story is section of an ongoing series checking out inquiries about human origins. Go through much more about historical humans: