Fossil Homo sapiens finger from Saudi
desert is 90,000 years old
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[April 11, 2018]
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fossil finger bone
dating back about 90,000 years that was unearthed in Saudi Arabia's
Nefud Desert is pointing to what scientists are calling a new
understanding of how our species came out of Africa en route to
colonizing the world.
Researchers said on Monday the middle bone of an adult's middle finger
found at site called Al Wusta is the oldest Homo sapiens fossil outside
of Africa and the immediately adjacent eastern Mediterranean Levant
region, as well as the first ancient human fossil from the Arabian
peninsula.
While the Nefud Desert is now a veritable sea of sand, it was hospitable
when this individual lived - a grasslands teeming with wildlife
alongside a freshwater lake.
Our species first appeared in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago.
Scientists previously thought Homo sapiens departed Africa in a single,
rapid migration some 60,000 years ago, journeying along the coastlines
and subsisting on marine resources, said anthropologist Michael
Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
in Germany.
This fossil of an intermediate phalanx bone, 1.2 inches (3.2 cm) long,
suggests our species exited Africa far earlier.

"This supports a model not of a single rapid dispersal out of Africa
60,000 years ago, but a much more complicated scenario of migration. And
this find, together with other finds in the last few years, suggests ...
Homo sapiens is moving out of Africa multiple times during many windows
of opportunity during the last 100,000 years or so," Petraglia said.
The discovery also shows these people were moving across the interior of
the land, not coastlines, Petraglia added.

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The single fossil finger bone of Homo sapiens - pictured from
various angles - from the Al Wusta site, Saudi Arabia is pictured in
this undated handout composite photo obtained by Reuters April 9,
2018. Ian Cartwright/Handout via REUTERS

Numerous animal fossils were discovered, including hippos, wild
cattle, antelopes and ostriches, University of Oxford archeologist
Huw Groucutt said. Bite marks on fossilized bones indicated
carnivores lived there, too.
Stone tools that hunter-gatherers used also were found.
"The big question now is what became of the ancestors of the
population to which the Al Wusta human belonged," Groucutt said.
"We know that shortly after they lived, the rains failed and the
area dried up. Did this population die out? Did it survive further
south in Arabia, where even today there are mountainous areas with
quite high rainfall and coastal regions which receive monsoonal
rains?" Groucutt added. "Or did the drying environment mean that
some of these people were 'pushed' further into Eurasia, as part of
a worldwide colonization?"
The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology and
Evolution.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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