Fragment of a Homo sapiens child’s jaw

The common ancestor of all primates goes back more than 60 million years. One of the traits we inherited from it, among others, was the opposable thumb that enables us to grasp and
hold. This group of monkeys went on to become greatly diversified and our human branch of it also formed numerous offshoots. Homo neanderthalensis were among the humans that were our contemporaries. Our species, Homo sapiens, existed alongside them in Europe for more than 10,000 years.

This fragment of jaw is one of the oldest remains of our own species of Homo sapiens to be discovered in France.