Homo fossil map
Where fossils of Homo have been found, shown on the Earth as it looked about 0 million years ago and on today’s map.
Dots are fossil collections recorded in the Paleobiology Database. The “then” view moves today’s fossil sites back to their positions 0 million years ago (the time slice nearest the median age of the fossils) using the Merdith et al. (2021) plate model; positions are approximate. Open on the timeline map →
| Group | Human relatives |
|---|---|
| Lived | 5.333 million years ago to the present (Zanclean to Holocene) |
| Periods | Neogene, Quaternary |
| Family | Hominidae |
| Named by | Linnaeus 1758 |
| Fossil records | 238 occurrences at 178 locations (PBDB) |
| Found in | Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, United States, Indonesia, Tanzania, Morocco, Congo, The Democratic Republic of the, China, Northern Mariana Islands … |
| Rock formations | txn:40899, Koobi Fora, Shungura, Olduvai, Kapthurin, Nachukui |
About Homo
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus (subtribe Hominina), encompassing a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (e.g. Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans, collectively called archaic humans. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the hominin genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos), with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7–11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with fossil records of just over 2 million years ago. H. erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Africa (debatably as another species called Homo ergaster) and Eurasia in several migrations. The species was adaptive and successful, and persisted for more than a million years before gradually diverging into new species around 500,000 years ago.
Text in “About” is quoted from the Wikipedia article Homo (revision 1376551555), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; introduction excerpted verbatim, formatting removed. Ages, family, authority and fossil records: Paleobiology Database, accessed 22 October 2026. Ages are those of the rock layers the fossils were found in.
