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New perspectives on the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens

Dr. Rolf Quam

Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University

Monday, February 5, 2018

5:15 pm, S1-149

 
About the seminar

The origin and evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens, has long been a central topic in paleoanthropology. For the last 25 years, anthropologists have held that modern humans first evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago and moved out of Africa only around 100,000 years ago. New fossil and genetic data are revising this timeline, considerably pushing back the timing of these events. In particular, fossils from Morocco have now been dated to around 300,000 years ago and are argued to represent an early form of Homo sapiens. At the same time, ancient DNA from Neandertal remains suggests genetic admixture with an African population sometime before 220,000 years ago. Most recently, the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa has been reported from a cave site in Israel and dates to 175,000-200,000 years ago. These new discoveries are revising anthropologists' understanding of our own evolutionary history and opening the door to even earlier encounters between Homo sapiens and other human species, including the possibility of cultural and/or biological exchanges.

 
About the Speaker

Binghamton University professor Rolf Quam is a paleoanthropologist whose fieldwork centers on the Pleistocene locality of the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. This series of sites has yielded some of the most important fossil assemblages in Europe, including the earliest European hominin as well as abundant remains of the ancestors of the Neandertals. In addition to studies of original Neandertal and Homo sapiens fosssils in Europe and the Middle East, his research has focused on the evolution of hearing and language in our fossil human ancestors. Most recently, he has participated in the study of the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa.

 
Related papers

Stringer, C., Galway-Witham, J., 2018. When did modern humans leave Africa? Science 359(6374), 389-390


Tattersall, I., 2009. Human origins: out of Africa. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 106(38), 16018-16021.

 

For more information, contact:

David Sloan Wilson, EvoS Director

Susan Ryan or Sudhindra Rao, Adjunct Faculty

Last Updated: 12/4/20