The story of humankind , once again , has been rewritten .
Researchers have late dated the " Broken Hill skull " , an important extinct hominid skull unwrap in the 1920s , and find oneself it ’s some 200,000 years former than previously recall . This means the sentence of hominin ancestry needs a reasonably major rethink . The revised dating suggests this extinct coinage might have shared the African continent with other hominins , including none other thanHomo sapiens(that ’s us ) .
The Broken Hill craniumwas recovered during metal ore minelaying in 1921 in present - day Zambia . It was earlier assign as a fresh species , Homo rhodesiensis , although most present-day scientists reason it belong to the speciesHomo heidelbergensis , a Middle Pleistocene species from Europe and Africa .
This was n’t the only controversy that arose from the skull . Most of the site was disrupt by quarry , destroy much of the grounds that could facilitate researchers go steady the specimen . Initial estimate dated the skull to around 500,000 age ago . However , the new research publish in the journalNatureconcluded that the skull is about 299,000 years old .
The skull , one of the best - preserve dodo ofH. heidelbergensisever break , can currently be found in the Natural History Museum in London . The team reassess its age using radiometric dating methods on the skull and the dusty sediment recovered from the excavation web site , estimating it is between 274,000 and 324,000 yr honest-to-god .
This has several big implications , not least becauseH. heidelbergensisis thought to be have been a key character in the report of human development . The hereditary connective betweenH. heidelbergensisto modern world is incertain , and this new dating makes things even more complex as it suggests that Africa was home to co - existing various human lineages some 300,000 years ago .
“ This [ skull ] is amazingly young , as a dodo at about 300,000 long time would be expected to show intermediate features betweenH. heidelbergensisandH. sapiens , but Broken Hill shows no significant features of our species , " Professor Chris Stringer , research drawing card in Human Origins from the Natural History Museum , explain in astatement .
“ Previously , the Broken Hill skull was viewed as part of a gradual and widespread evolutionary succession in Africa from archaic man to modern humanity . But now it looks as if the primitive speciesHomo naledisurvived in southerly Africa , H. heidelbergensiswas in south - central Africa , and early form of our species existed in regions like Morocco and Ethiopia , ” added Stringer .
