We Used To Be Prey
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The answer to a scientific "who-done-it?" has revealed a chilling fact: We used to be bird food.
Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the "Taung child", a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle.
"Birds used to eat us and in doing so they shaped our behaviour," said Dr Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
"Birds of prey are one of the few things that some modern primates have special calls or alarms for," he told Reuters.
Berger said the child had probably been scooped up by an eagle and taken to its nest, where its eyes were ripped out for dinner. The child's skull eventually fell out of the nest, only to be found almost 2 million years later.
Placing us on the eagle's menu may also explain other aspects of human evolution, from walking upright, which could present a smaller target to an aerial attacker, to our tendency to live in groups.
"These birds would have been after the most vulnerable members of the group," Berger said, a scenario which may have triggered collective measures of protection.
This murder most foul occurred 2 million years ago but the culprit, an African crowned eagle -- also known as the crowned hawk-eagle -- still circles the skies and large eagles still prey on small primates in Africa.
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Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the "Taung child", a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle.
"Birds used to eat us and in doing so they shaped our behaviour," said Dr Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
"Birds of prey are one of the few things that some modern primates have special calls or alarms for," he told Reuters.
Berger said the child had probably been scooped up by an eagle and taken to its nest, where its eyes were ripped out for dinner. The child's skull eventually fell out of the nest, only to be found almost 2 million years later.
Placing us on the eagle's menu may also explain other aspects of human evolution, from walking upright, which could present a smaller target to an aerial attacker, to our tendency to live in groups.
"These birds would have been after the most vulnerable members of the group," Berger said, a scenario which may have triggered collective measures of protection.
This murder most foul occurred 2 million years ago but the culprit, an African crowned eagle -- also known as the crowned hawk-eagle -- still circles the skies and large eagles still prey on small primates in Africa.
Read the Novels by Chetan Davé click here
posted by UltimateWriter at 2:04 PM
2 Comments:
From bird's food to worm's meat! Ahh, the circle of life complete! :)
jlb: welcome back! well put...we'll have to keep checking the sky for those eagles.
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