While the remains of modern Homo sapiens dating back roughly 197,000 years have been recovered in Israel, genetic studies suggest the main phase of early human migration out of Africa and into Asia occurred much later - around 50,000 years ago, Shackelford said. Her team's earliest excavations in Tam Pa Ling found bone fragments from modern human remains dating to about 40,000 years ago. But as the excavations dug deeper, the age of sediments and animal remains found alongside human bones dated back much earlier. In 2019, the team had excavated as far as they could in the cave, reaching bedrock about 23 feet (7 meters) below the surface. The excavations yielded dozens of animal bones and many fragments of human skeletal remains. The deepest human bone recovered - a partial tibia - was resting on bedrock near the bottom of the trench. Analyses of sediments taken not far above this bone indicate the soil was deposited there between 67,000 and 90,000 years ago.