You are what you eat, and that seems to have been true even 2 million years ago, when a group of pre-human relatives was swinging through the trees and racing across the savannas of South Africa.
A study published in the journal Nature reveals that Australopithecus sediba, an ape-like creature with human features living in a region about 50 miles northwest of today's Johannesburg, exclusively consumed fruits, leaves and other forest-based foods, even though its habitat was near grassy savanna with its rich variety of savory sedges, tasty tubers and even juicy animals.
"This astonished us," explains Benjamin Passey, a Johns Hopkins University geochemist on the international team that conducted the study. "Most hominin species appear to have been pretty good at eating what was around them and available, but sediba seems to have been unusual in that, like present-day chimpanzees, it ignored available savanna foods." (Watch a video about the discovery here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IaZwDavDDI)
These new findings add detail to the emerging picture of our various pre-human relatives, and why some thrived and continued to evolve, while others became extinct.
"We know that if you are a hominin, in order to get to the rest of the world, at some point you must leave the forests, and our ancestors apparently did so," said Passey. "The fates of those that did not leave are well-known: They are extinct or, like the chimpanzee and gorilla today, are in enormous peril. So the closing chapter in the story of hominin evolution is the story of these 'dids' and 'did nots.'"
In order to learn what these 4-foot-tall, small-brained, bipedal beings had for dinner most nights 2,000 millennia ago, Passey wielded a laser to extract and vaporize infinitesimal bits of fossilized tooth enamel from two Au. sediba individuals.
He then used a mass
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| Contact: Lisa DeNike Lde@jhu.edu 443-287-9960 Johns Hopkins University Source:Eurekalert |
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