Researchers determined that the bones unearthed in Morocco's Jebel Irhoud region are 315,000 years old — roughly 100,000 older than the bones previously considered oldest modern human fossils. (Those fossils, found in Ethiopia, were roughly 196,000 years old.)
The remains were also found in a different area of Africa than most other ancient human bones: North Africa instead of East Africa. That suggests our earliest ancestors may not have lived in just one part of the continent.
"There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is, it is all of Africa," anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led the Morocco expedition, said at the time.