London, Sept 17 (ANI): A reanalysis of a 13,000-year-old skull has revealed that ancient and modern humans interbred in Africa.
The analysis of the skull, excavated from Iwo Eleru cave in Nigeria in 1965, suggested that the ancestors of early humans, instead of dying out quickly in Africa, lived alongside their descendents and bred with them until more recently than had been previously thought.
The skull's features do not reflect a modern human being at all and are closer to a much older skull from Tanzania, thought to be around 140,000-year old.
Prof Katerina Harvati from the University of Tuebingen in Germany, who used new digitising techniques to capture the surface of the skull in detail, said that the skull is more primitive than it looks.
"The skull has got a much more primitive appearance, even though it is only 13,000 years old," the BBC quoted Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, who was part of the team of researchers, as saying.
"This suggests that human evolution in Africa was more complex... the transition to modern humans was not a straight transition and then a cut off," he added.
The results are published in PLoS ONE. (ANI)
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