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Vegetarian cavemen died off, researchers say
Story Date: 8/14/2012
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Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 8/13/12
Although Paleolithic diets, or meat-heavy caveman diets, are among the latest diet fads, researchers have shown that our most successful ancestors likely had diverse diets rather than those that consisted largely of meat or fruits and nuts.
A team of researchers led by Vincent Balter from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France used lasers to analyze fossilized teeth of the three types of early ancestors, all of which were found in southern Africa. They analyzed ratios of calcium, barium and strontium to determine their diets.
The researchers found that Australopithecus africanus (which lived from about 4 million to 2 million years ago and is an early ancestor of modern humans) had a diverse diet of meat, fruits and leaves.
They also found that the Paranthropus robustus — which relied heavily on plants and is documented at around 2.7 million years ago — became extinct about 1 million years ago. The early Homo lineage, which emerged about 2.3 million years ago, was largely a meat eater.
The results of the recent study were published online earlier this month in the journal Nature.
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