An ancient human face emerges from pieced together Moroccan fossil remains

edited by Gaby Clark , reviewed by Robert Egan

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Add as preferred source Scientists presented a digital facial approximation of a composite skull from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. Credit: Heritage (2026). DOI: 10.3390/heritage9090369 In the 1960s, a miner working at a mineral extraction site in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, struck something far more valuable than any mineral in the area: a skull with distinctly humanlike features. After an initial examination, archaeologists excavated further and uncovered more remains, which they estimated to be around 40,000 years old. They identified the main skull as an African Neanderthal and named it Irhoud 1.

The timeline took a huge leap backward in 2017, when researchers determined that the fossils were actually around 315,000 years old and belonged to Homo sapiens.