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The findings help answer a question that had plagued paleoanthropologists for years: Why did these fossils look more primitive than fossils dated from the same time? Found among stone tools and the ashes of ancient campfires, the remains date from about 300,000 years ago, a time when the Sahara was green and several early human species roamed the world, the scientists said.

That suggested that the fossil represented a lingering remnant of an archaic species, perhaps H.

National Museum in London paleoanthropologist Christopher Stringer speculates that the flattened faces of early Homo sapiens may be related to the advent of speech.

The Mungo Man was found a few years later, only a few meters away from where the Mungo Woman had been found.

Found in a cave known as the Jebel Irhoud archaeological site about 100 kilometers 62 miles west of Marrakesh, the fossils change how archaeologists understand how Homo sapiens evolved.

Yet the delicate cheekbones and retracted face look more modern, as do details of the skulls and teeth, and the shape of the jawbones.

But the date may also widen the distance between H.

The discovery of the specimens was significant because it filled in a 60,000 year gap in the human fossil record.

These new fossils make experts believe that our species evolved not in Eastern Africa specifically near Ethiopia where later fossils were found, but across the continent in Western Africa where modern Morocco is situated.