The face of the first man was revealed 300,000 years after his death.
Scientists have reconstructed the oldest known Homo sapien skull found in Morocco, which was missing its lower jaw when it was discovered in 2017.
The team created a digital scan of the skull, layered it with soft tissue and skin, creating a man described as “strong and calm”.
An ancient skull has shown that Homo sapiens appeared 100,000 years earlier than thought and migrated out of Africa earlier than previous evidence suggested.
The life-like image was created by scientists who reconstructed a skull belonging to the oldest known Homo sapien.
Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes completed the recreation after receiving data from researchers at the Max Planck Institute.
“I initially scanned the skull in 3D using data provided by researchers at the Max Planck Institute.
“Then I continued with the approximation of the face, which consisted of crossing several approaches, such as anatomical deformation.
“Here, modern human tomography is used to adapt the donor skull to become the Jebel Irhoud skull, and the deformation ends up creating a compatible face.”
The name of the skull comes from the place where it was found.
The donor skull was also digitized and chosen because it seemed closest to an ancient skull, allowing researchers to fill in the missing parts of the ancient remains.
Additional data from modern humans were used to predict the thickness of soft tissue and the likely projection of the nose and other facial structures.
Scientists have reconstructed the oldest known Homo sapien skull found in Morocco, which was missing its lower jaw when it was discovered in 2017.
The team created a digital scan of the skull, layered it with soft tissue and skin, creating a man described as “strong and calm”.
“The final face is an interpolation of all this data that generates two sets of images, one objective, with more technical elements, without hair and in grayscale,” Cicero said.
“The other is artistic, with skin and hair pigmentation.
However, the individual’s actual gender is unknown due to the absence of pelvic bones.
The skull was discovered by scientists from the Max Planck Institute and found alongside stone tools and animal bones in Jebel Irhoud.
Previously, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from the Omo Kibish site in Ethiopia, dated to 195,000 years ago.
However, the individual’s actual gender is unknown due to the absence of pelvic bones
This has led most researchers to believe that all humans alive today are descended from a population that lived in East Africa at this time.
Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led the study, said: “We previously thought that the cradle of humanity was in East Africa 200,000 years ago, but our new data shows that Homo sapiens spread across the African continent around 300,000 years ago . .
“Long before Homo sapiens spread out of Africa, there was a dispersal in Africa.”
Jebel Irhous has been known for its human fossils since the 1960s, and the latest discovery brings the total number of remains to 22.
A team of researchers discovered skulls, teeth and long bones from at least five individuals – two adults and three children.