Penn team uncovers skeleton of 'world's oldest child'

Anthropologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis said there wasn't enough evidence one way or the other to know if Neanderthals had an extended childhood just as we do.

Trinkaus says he hopes the new finding will reveal if the people of this time and place were anatomically modern humans or archaic Homo sapiens.

Archaic people had somewhat different features - including a brow ridge or lack of a chin. But they may have been ancestral to us since these populations were capable of interbreeding.

And while he hasn't seen the child yet, he thinks it could add to our emerging story of humanity's origin and early history. "It's a group of humans living in a peripheral area of the world, in some ways adapting to a harsh environment," he said. There were Neanderthals living just across the Strait of Gibraltar, in Spain, and some of the tools in Morocco resemble Neanderthal tools from Spain.

Hublin doesn't think the region is necessarily peripheral. "Emphasis has been put so much in south Africa because this is where we had data. But it's like the story of the drunk man looking for his keys - he doesn't look in the dark."

So perhaps this child could add some light.

Contact staff writer Faye Flam

at 215-854-4977 or fflam@phillynews.com.