Thursday, January 13, 2022
newly dated finds
Homo sapiens fossils older than fiction
In 1967, archaeologists in Ethiopia discovered the fossilized remains of a Homo sapiens. They are considered one of the oldest records of our species. New research shows: Fossils are probably older than previously thought. The new findings go back to volcanologists.
One of the oldest known human fossils is probably about 35,000 years older than previously thought. like one on wednesday Study published in the journal “Nature” suggests that Kibish Omo I, the baptized Homo sapiens, whose remains were found in Ethiopia in 1967, lived about 233,000 years ago. Geologists had previously estimated the age of the remains to be at least 195,000 years.
The discovery of Kibish Omo I consisted only of bone and skull fragments, which were difficult to date. Geologists analyzed the layer of rock beneath the discovery in 2005 and came up to 195,000 years. “But there was still a lot of uncertainty,” says Celine Vidal, lead author of the recently published study.
A volcanologist at Cambridge University relied on examining the ash layer that had accumulated on the fossils. Using modern methods, his team linked this ash layer to a major eruption of a volcano called Shala. According to this, the layer in which Omo I was found is approximately 233,000 years old, with an error margin of 22,000 years. “It’s a huge leap in time,” said paleontologist and study co-author Aurelian Mounier. The new minimum age for the Omo Eye better agrees with the most recent theories on human evolution.
The discovery of Omo is now drawing closer to the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, which were discovered in Morocco in 2017 and dated to 300,000 years ago. The discovery of Morocco appears to contradict the long-accepted theory that the “cradle of mankind” is to be found in East Africa.
Paleoanthropologist Mounier, however, considers Morocco to be less convincing: fossils indicate a modern face and a large brain habitat, which, however, have an archaic shape. “Omo I. is the only fossil that has all the morphological features of modern humans,” Mounier says.
