Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

[2][3] In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that they would be sequencing the Neanderthal genome.

[7] Dating carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig revealed that the Jebel Irhoud site and its Homo sapiens fossils were far older than first thought.

The finds included part of a skull, a jawbone, teeth, and limb bones that had come from three adults, a juvenile, and a child aged about seven and a half years old.

They have similar features to a skull dating to 260,000 years ago that was found at the other end of the continent, in Florisbad, South Africa, which has been attributed to Homo sapiens on the basis of the Jebel Irhoud finds.

[9][8] The tools were found alongside gazelle bones and lumps of charcoal, indicating the presence of fire and probably of cooking in the cave.

The gazelle bones showed characteristic signs of butchery and cooking, such as cut marks, notches consistent with marrow extraction, and charring.

This enabled the researchers to use thermoluminescence dating to ascertain when the burning had happened, and by proxy, the age of the fossil bones, which were found in the same deposit layer.

"[9] Early humans may have comprised a large, interbreeding population dispersed across Africa whose spread was facilitated by a wetter climate that created a "green Sahara", approximately 300,000 to 330,000 years ago.