Homo sapiens specimen found at the site Kibish Omo I, was discovered by volcanologist Prof. Céline Vidal of the University of Cambridge, Prof. Aurélien Mounier, a paleoanthropologist with the Museum of Mankind in Paris, and colleagues.
The remains of the Kibish Omo I from Ethiopia — among the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens in eastern Africa — could be at least 36,000 years older than previously thought. The minimum age is estimated to be approximately 233,000 years old, a timescale that aligns more consistently with models of modern human evolution.
They were initially discovered in the 1960s, the specimens in Omo dated to 197,000 years. An additional set of early modern humans found at another Ethiopian site, Herto, dated 160,000-155,000 years.
