Bird attacks influenced human evolution, researchers say
By Aussiegirl
Shades of Alfred Hitchcock!
Bird attacks influenced human evolution, researchers say
By Holly Wagner/Ohio State University
and World Science staff
Prehistoric birds of prey may have targeted our ancestors for meals so often that the threat of them helped drive human evolution, researchers say based on a study.
Analyzing hundreds of modern monkey bones gathered below African eagles’ nests, the scientists found the birds are a severe menace to some of our primate cousins.
They also concluded that the resulting bone injuries are suspiciously very like those on the skull of an ape-like child of human ancestors, found decades ago. It apparently has clawed-out eyesockets, they said.
“It seems that raptors have been a selective force in primate evolution for a long time,” said W. Scott McGraw of Ohio State university, the study’s lead author.
“Before this study I thought that eagles wouldn’t contribute that much to the mortality rate of primates in the forest. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
The idea that birds ate early humans isn’t new. A 1995 study suggested that the prehistoric 3½-year-old “Taung Child,” whose skull turned up in a South African cave in 1924, might have been a victim of such an incident. But scientists saw the evidence as inconclusive.
McGraw, though, argued that puncture marks on monkey skulls closely resemble those found on the Taung skull, of the species Australopithecus africanus. “Eagles leave very distinctive beak and talon punctures around the face and in the eye sockets,” he argued. “The skull of the Taung child has these same kinds of puncture marks.”
“This fossil is probably the most written-about, studied and handled hominid skull ever,” he added. “But almost no one had really bothered to look at skulls discarded from eagle nests” to cement the case against birds. [....]
posted by Aussiegirl @ 6:38 PM
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