![]() ![]() Michael Pante Analyses of 3-D models of the deepest marks on a hominid fossil leg bone, including the ones depicted here in blue and green, pegged the incisions as cuts made by another hominid wielding a stone tool. Depths of marks are measured in micrometers. ![]() Analyses of 3-D models of the deepest marks on a hominid fossil leg bone, including the ones depicted here in blue and green, pegged the incisions as cuts made by another hominid wielding a stone tool. The pair created 3-D scans of the bone marks and compared them with 898 bone marks known to have been made by stone cutting tools, stone pounding implements, the teeth of crocodiles, lions and other nonhuman predators, or cows trampling the ground ( SN: 11/6/17). Pobiner sent molds of 11 incisions on the fossil to paleoanthropologists Michael Pante of Colorado State University in Fort Collins and Trevor Keevil of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. ![]() But marks on the leg bone looked to her like butchery damage. She wanted to identify which nonhuman predators hunted and ate ancient hominids. Pobiner first examined the incised leg bone while studying fossils held at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya. But there’s debate about that interpretation. Those incisions are the oldest convincing example of such butchery and possibly cannibalism among ancient hominids, says paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. ![]()
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