Banquet for Leopards. Our ancestors were more stuck than predators

It took some time until humans went up in the food chain.

Most paleobiologists believe that humanity truly began about 2 million years ago, with a species known as Man handy.

Part of this evolutionary demarcation derives from the current theory that the first hominids were from the first primates consistently to pass the ungrateful role of “Prey” for “predator”.

However, according to a study of small lesions in two fossilized fragments of a jaw of H. handysome researchers now believe that our ancestors They needed some more time to climb the food chain.

The conclusion is presented in a recently published Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

In the study, a team of researchers from the University of Alcalá, Spain, examined small marks of tooth in fossils of H. handy Originally found in the gorge of Olduvai, Tanzania.

To this end, they first trained an advanced automatic learning model with an image library consisting of almost 1,500 photographs of Indentations of bites made by current carnivoreslike lions, crocodiles, wolves and hyenas.

Then, it tells, they asked the program to analyze photos of the jaws of H. handy to verify that the lesions corresponded to any of the predators present in the data set.

Given the triangular form of each dental brandthe system concluded with more than 90% probability that the teeth belonged to an old species of leopard.

“The implications of this are significantbecause they show that H. handy it was still more prey than predator”The study’s authors wrote.“ It also shows that the trophic position of some of the first representatives of the Homo genre not different from that of other Australopithecines. ”

Although the analysis focused only on two specimens of H. handyadditional contextual evidence reinforces this theory. According to the investigators, the early hominids would have much more damage if their bodies had been devoured by something like the overwhelming jaws of bone in a hyena.

“This suggests that H. Habilis was unable to ward off the top of the top of their prey,” argued the authors.

This does not mean, however, that the ancestors of humanity were not impressive in other aspects. There is still evidence that connects H. handy to some of the First uses of stone toolslike the dismemberment of animals.

But if they are ever more fossil H. handy With signs of having served as a banquet to predators, the discovery would only reinforce the idea that hominids still They were not true conquerors of its territory.