Published online Nov Copyright and License information Disclaimer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. This article has been corrected. See PLoS Biol. Open in a separate window. Reconstruction of Neanderthal woman.
Support Center Support Center. External link. Paleoanthropologists agree that modern humans evolved in Africa about , years ago, yet the fossil evidence for the earliest examples of Homo sapiens is scarce.
One problem is the difficulty in recognizing true modern humans in the fossil record: At this time, many of the fossils thought to be early members of our species possess a mix of modern and primitive traits. For some paleoanthropologists, it means our species once had a greater range of physical variation than we do today. For others, it means more than one species of Homo may have lived in Africa at this time, sharing some traits in common.
Despite the challenges of identifying early humans, there are several candidates for the earliest known members of our species. Originally the fossils, Omo I a partial skull and skeleton and Omo II a partial skull , were thought to be , years old, but a dating reanalysis in revealed they were much older—, years old, making them the oldest fossils assigned to Homo sapiens.
Over the last 45 years, the species status of the fossils has been debated. Science News. Journal Reference : Caramelli et al. ScienceDaily, 16 July Public Library of Science. Retrieved November 11, from www. The first evidence has been found by an international team in the cave of Figueira Brava in Portugal.
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