Human fossils unearthed in Casablanca shed new light on key period in human evolution

RABAT – Morocco’s Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication announced Wednesday that, as part of the Franco-Moroccan "Prehistory of Casablanca" program - stemming from an institutional collaboration between Morocco's National Institute of Sciences of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (INSAP) under the Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication / Department of Culture, and France's Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs through the French "Casablanca" archaeological mission, co-directed by Abderrahim Mohib (INSAP), Rosalia Gallotti (Paul Valéry University of Montpellier & LabEx Archimède), and Camille Daujeard (MNHN / CNRS – HNHP) - an international research team published a study in Nature on January 7.

The study presents the analysis of new hominin fossils unearthed in a cavity at the Thomas I quarry in Casablanca, Morocco. The material studied includes several human mandibles - those of two adults and a child - as well as dental and post-cranial remains. These fossils combine archaic features observed in Homo erectus with more modern derived traits.

Magnetostratigraphic analysis, of unprecedented resolution for a site yielding hominin remains, allowed these fossils to be dated with extraordinary precision. The sediments filling the cavity and containing the fossil remains provide a high-resolution record of the Matuyama-Brunhes magnetic reversal, dated to 773,000 years ago, thus offering one of the most precise and robust ages for a site with human remains.

This ensemble documents human populations that remain poorly known for this pivotal period, situated between the ancient forms of the genus Homo and more recent lineages.

These discoveries fill a major gap in the African fossil record at a time when paleogenetic data place the divergence between the African lineage leading to Homo sapiens and the Eurasian lineages ancestral to Neanderthals and Denisovans. The fossils exhibit a unique combination of primitive and more advanced features, testifying to human populations close to this divergence phase.

They thus confirm the antiquity and depth of our species' African roots, while underscoring North Africa's key role in the major stages of human evolution.

These human fossils, discovered in the Hominid Cave within the Thomas I quarry near Casablanca (Morocco), provide unprecedented insight into a key period of human evolution around 773,000 years ago. Thanks to precise dating based on the Earth's magnetic field record, these remains can be reliably placed chronologically within the ancient history of African human populations. They illuminate the emergence of the Homo sapiens lineage and reinforce the idea that its deep roots are African.

The study was led and supported by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Sciences of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (Morocco); the Directorate of Cultural Heritage (Morocco); Collège de France; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany); Paul Valéry University of Montpellier (France); Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy); University of Bordeaux; and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (France).