HENRY

Ann Gibbons in ScienceNow:

“Geneticists and paleoanthropologists disagree about whether the ancestors of modern humans began to leave Africa as early as 100,000 years ago or as recently as 50,000 years ago. Although several recent genetic studies have supported a late exodus, fossil evidence has furnished few clues to the timing. Paleontologists have not found any fossils from the crucial period from the most likely source—sub-Saharan Africa.”

“It seems that they just had to take a closer look at a stunning skull that’s been sitting on a South African museum shelf for more than 50 years.” More…

Abstract of Grine et al here:

“The Hofmeyr cranium is consistent with the hypothesis that (Upper Paleolithic) Eurasians descended from a population that emigrated from sub-Saharan Africa in the Late Pleistocene.”

Posted on January 12th, 2007 by Simon Greenhill