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Researcher: Predatory birds hunted ancestors
Associated Press
Published January 13, 2006
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - An American researcher thinks he has solved the mystery of how one of the most important human ancestors died almost 2-million years ago: An eagle killed the 31/2-year old ape-man known as the Taung child.
The discovery suggests small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
"These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared," Berger said in documents accompanying a presentation Thursday.
"These are the stresses that formed the human mind and made us one of the most successful animals on the face of the planet."
The discovery of the partial skull of a juvenile ape-man in South Africa's North West Province in 1924 revealed a human ancestor species called Australopithecus africanus, which was proposed to be the "missing link" between apes and humans. It also gave evidence that early humans evolved in Africa, rather than Europe and Asia, as most scientists believed at the time.
The child's death has been blamed on a leopard or saber-toothed cat, which are known to have preyed on hominids. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory that the hunter was a predatory bird, similar to today's African crowned eagle.
Other researchers agreed eagles were likely preying on small animals at the Taung site, but contended ape-men were too large, sophisticated and organized to be taken by a bird.
"The one big problem was the lack of multiple areas of damage on the Taung child itself that could be linked to a bird of prey," Berger said. "We had one little flap of bone on the top of the skull that looked like some of the damage we see made by eagles and nothing else. ... It was the ultimate 2-million-year-old cold case."
Five months ago, researchers from Ohio State University submitted what Berger called the most comprehensive study to date of eagle damage on bones. Berger was among those asked to review the paper for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
The study by Scott McGraw, Catherine Cooke and Suzanne Schultz of primate remains from modern crowned eagle nests in Ivory Coast's Tai forest showed raptors routinely hunt primates much larger than themselves by swooping down and piercing their skulls with their back talons.
The study prompted Berger to re-examine the Taung skull.
"I picked up this little face, and I almost dropped it," he said Thursday. There was a tiny hole and jagged tears at the base of the eye sockets that he and researchers had never noticed.
Berger's research is to be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
[Last modified January 13, 2006, 01:47:08]
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