The man from Jebel Irhoud: an archaic human with a modern looking face?
In 1961, the remains of a 300,000 year-old human were discovered in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, in North Africa. This fossil was much older than Omo-1 and looked archaic: no chin was ever found but its skull for example, appeared "stretched" or elongated, rather than high and rounded as in modern humans.
But despite being archaic, the Jebel Irhoud skull had the short vertical face tucked in under the skull like that is typically seen in modern humans.
But modern humans wouldn’t appear in Africa for another 100,000 years.
One suggestion is that different modern human features such as pointy chins and small tucked in faces may have evolved in different areas across the African continent, coming together as archaic humans migrated across Africa and interbred.
For a long time it was thought that modern humans arose only in Eastern Africa before spreading across the continent, but fossils like Jebel Irhoud suggest modern humans are a patchwork people: children of all of Africa.