Scientists Have Found the Oldest Known Human Fossils

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, around 62 miles west of what would eventually become Marrakesh, a group of people lived in a cave overlooking a lush Moroccan landscape. They rested there, building fires to keep themselves warm. They hunted there, sharpening stone tools to bring down animals. And they died there, leaving their bones behind in the dirt. At the time, there would have been nothing particularly notable about these cave-dwellers. They were yet more Homo sapiens, members of a nascent ape species that had spread across Africa. But in their death, they have become singularly important.

That cave is now called Jebel Irhoud, and bones of its former occupants have been . They mark the earliest fossilized remains of ever found. Until now, that honor belonged to two Ethiopian fossils that are and respectively. But the Jebel Irhoud bones, and , are far older—around 315,000 years old, with a possible range of 280,000 to 350,000 years.