Taung Child Killed By Bird Of Prey, Not Cat



http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=261127&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/

The case of who killed the single most important human ancestor has
finally been laid to rest after more than 80 years of debate and
scientific investigation. The announcement that the Taung child was
killed by an eagle was made on Thursday by Professor Lee Berger at an
international conference held at the University of the Witwatersrand
(Wits) in Johannesburg.
...
Ten years ago, Berger and Dr Ron Clarke of Wits challenged the world's
scientific community with the idea that the little Taung child had
probably been killed by a large bird of prey.

Berger and Clarke shocked the scientific community by claiming that the
skulls and bones of monkey and animal fossils from the Taung site in
north-western South Africa showed distinctive evidence of eagle-caused
damage. They proposed that the three-and-a-half-year old Taung child,
who died nearly two million years ago, had also been killed by an eagle,
probably similar to the present-day crowned eagle of Africa.

"While some colleagues accepted that the damage to the Taung fossil monkeys
was probably made by a bird of prey, the majority felt that apemen, even
baby apemen like the Taung child, were way too large, sophisticated and
organised to be taken by an eagle," says Berger, who is now a reader in
palaeoanthropology at Wits.

"There were several debates in international journals about whether an eagle
could lift a child as heavy as the Taung baby," he says.
...
But the McGraw paper went further than any previous research. The Ohio-based
scientists had found several key features of damage on bone that separated
eagle damage from that made by other predators, such as big cats. These key
markers included flaps of depressed bone on top of the skull and
"keyhole-shaped" cuts in the side of skulls made by birds' beaks, all features
noted in Berger and Clarke's 1995 paper.

"They also found one suite of characters I had never before seen described,
characters that were unique to eagle-damaged skulls and were sure clues to
raptor involvement," Berger explains.

"These critical clues were puncture marks and ragged incisions in the base of
the eye sockets of primates, made when the eagles ripped the eyes out of the
dead monkeys with their sharp talons and beaks. It was a marker that others
hadn't noted before, that linked eagles definitively to the kill."

Berger was then driven to re-examine the Taung child, probably the most
photographed human ancestor with possibly more casts of it scattered around
the world than from any other single fossil.

Berger recounts: "I almost dropped down when I looked into the eyes of the
skull as I saw the marks, as described in the McGraw paper -- they were
perfect examples of eagle damage! I couldn't believe my eyes as thousands of
scientists, including myself, had overlooked this critical damage.

"I even went to look at an original 1925 cast of the child to make sure the
damage had been there originally, and it had. I felt a little bit like an
idiot for not seeing those marks 10 years ago, but at least we had them now.
...
.

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