News Anthropology

This 300,000-year-old skull may be from an African ‘ghost’ population

The Broken Hill fossil’s age suggests the hominid lived at the same time as Homo sapiens

Broken Hill skull

An enigmatic African hominid fossil known as the Broken Hill skull dates to around 300,000 years ago, about the time that Homo sapiens started evolving across that continent, researchers say.

The Natural History Museum/Alamy Stock Photo

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

A mysterious but well-preserved hominid skull found nearly a century ago comes from a population that lived in Africa around 300,000 years ago, as the earliest Homo sapiens were evolving, a new study finds.