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Professor Michael Petraglia, director of Griffith University’s Australia Research Centre for Human Evolution, was not involved in the research directly but wrote an accompanying discussion paper.

He said the research gave the clearest picture yet of where and when human species spread across the globe.

“These environments were constantly changing and hominins are constantly reacting to that as well,” he said.

“They’re moving, they’re adapting, or they’re even going extinct when environments ‘turn off’ – there’s extinction events, contraction of populations in times when habitats were not conducive.”

Petraglia noted most known hominin data came from sites in Europe, with significant but fewer sites in Africa and only a scattering of other sites across the rest of the world.

He said that was the result of “a hundred years of European-focused research”, which meant even data out of Africa, where humans were believed to have first evolved, was patchier than it should be.

But he said that meant that there was still vast areas where discoveries about humanity’s ancient origins were waiting to be rediscovered.

“In the maps they produced, there are habitats where there are gaps, the habitat suggests it would support hominins, but no fossils have been discovered there – yet,” he said.

“So this work gives us good hints about where we should be looking next for archaeological sites.”