Human fossils are oldest yet

Our species, Homo sapiens, has a new pair of ultimate old-timers. The remains of two ancient individuals, found in Ethiopia in 1967, date to about 195,000 years ago, a research team reports in the Feb. 17 Nature.

The former most-senior H. sapiens fossils were a trio of roughly 160,000-year-old skulls unearthed in 1997 at Ethiopia’s Herto site (SN: 6/14/03, p.