Origins of Humans: Morocco Unveils the Potential Common Ancestor of Sapiens and Neanderthal

Morocco confirms its status as a key land for paleoanthropology. These new fossils document a little-known period of African populations, long before the famous Homo sapiens of Jebel Irhoud (300,000 years).

Paleogenetic data had already estimated that the last common ancestor of our species and its extinct cousins (Neanderthal and Denisova) lived between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago. This discovery in Casablanca places these hominids squarely within this critical time window, providing concrete elements where the geographical distribution remained unclear.

A distinct lineage from Homo antecessor

While contemporary fossils, those of Homo antecessor (dated between 950,000 and 770,000 years), had been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain, the Moroccan remains tell a different story.

Although similar in age, the Casablanca fossils are morphologically distinct from their Spanish counterparts. They present a unique combination of primitive and derived traits, evoking both archaic Eurasian hominids and future Homo sapiens. This distinction reinforces the hypothesis of an African origin of our lineage, rather than Eurasian, consolidating the "solid evidence" of a deep continental anchoring of humanity.