Jebel Irhoud

Jebel Irhoud or Adrar Ighud is an archaeological site located just north of the locality known as Tlet Ighoud, about 50km south-east of the city of Safi in Morocco. It is noted for the Hominidae fossils that have been found there since the site's discovery in 1960. Originally thought to be Neanderthals, the specimens have since been assigned to Homo sapiens and have been dated to over 300,000 years old. If correct, this would make them by far the oldest known fossil remains of Homo sapiens.FindsThe site is the remnants of a solutional cave filled with 8m of deposits from the Pleistocene era, located on the eastern side of a karstic outcrop of limestone at an elevation of 562m. It was discovered in 1960 when the area was being mined for the mineral baryte. A miner discovered a skull in the wall of the cave, extracted it and gave it to an engineer, who kept it as a souvenir for a time. It was eventually handed over to the University of Rabat, who organized a joint French-Moroccan expedition to the site in 1961, headed by the French researcher Émile Ennouchi.Ennouchi's team identified the remains of around 30 species of mammals, some of which are associated with the Middle Pleistocene, but the stratigraphic provenance is unknown. Another excavation was carried out by Jacques Tixier and Roger de Bayle des Hermens in 1967 and 1969 in which 22 layers were identified in the cave. The lower 13 layers were found to contain signs of human habitation including an industry classified as Levallois Mousterian.