Overview
- The Nature study, led by the Max Planck Institute, analyzes jaws, teeth and vertebrae from Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca that were deposited during the last major geomagnetic reversal about 773,000 years ago.
- The fossils show a mosaic of archaic and more modern traits and are interpreted as an early African branch close to the population split that later produced Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.
- The find strengthens Africa‑centered explanations for the common ancestry of these lineages and helps fill a long‑standing gap in the continent’s fossil record near the genetic divergence window of roughly 765,000–550,000 years ago.
- Comparisons with Atapuerca’s Homo antecessor suggest contemporaneous but regionally distinct trajectories across the Mediterranean, with the Spanish fossils trending toward Neanderthal features and the Moroccan set closer to later African populations.
- Researchers emphasize that a single assemblage cannot identify a sole last common ancestor because the divergence reflects populations over time, though the Moroccan material offers one of the strongest African candidates near that timeframe.