Full title: "Scientists 'Surprised' to Discover Very Early Ancestors Survived On Tropical Plants, New Study Suggests".
Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Australopithecus bahrelghazali: Mio-Pliocene hominids from Chad
Posted on 12/24/2012 6:20:36 PM PST by SunkenCiv
An international research team extracted information from the fossilised teeth of three Australopithecus bahrelghazali individuals -- the first early hominins excavated at two sites in Chad. Professor Julia Lee-Thorp from Oxford University with researchers from Chad, France and the US analysed the carbon isotope ratios in the teeth and found the signature of a diet rich in foods derived from C4 plants.
Professor Lee-Thorp, a specialist in isotopic analyses of fossil tooth enamel, from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, said: "We found evidence suggesting that early hominins, in central Africa at least, ate a diet mainly composed of tropical grasses and sedges. No African great apes, including chimpanzees, eat this type of food despite the fact it grows in abundance in tropical and subtropical regions. The only notable exception is the savannah baboon which still forages for these types of plants today. We were surprised to discover that early hominins appear to have consumed more than even the baboons."
The research paper suggests this discovery demonstrates how early hominins experienced a shift in their diet relatively early, at least in Central Africa. The finding is significant in signalling how early humans were able to survive in open landscapes with few trees, rather than sticking only to types of terrain containing many trees. This allowed them to move out of the earliest ancestral forests or denser woodlands, and occupy and exploit new environments much farther afield, says the study.
The fossils of the three individuals, ranging between three million and 3.5 million years old, originate from two sites in the Djurab desert.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Australopithecus bahrelghazali: Mio-Pliocene hominids from Chad
Infectious Evolution: Ancient Virus Hit Apes, Not Our Ancestors, In The Genes
Science News | 3-5-2005 (issue) | Bruce Bower
Posted on Sat Apr 2 14:48:39 2005 by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1376168/posts
Asia the home of primate ancestors
The Times of London | March 15, 2002 | By Mark Henderson
Posted on Thu Mar 14 17:48:49 2002 by Map Kernow
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/646681/posts
The Scars of Evolution"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'" [Primary Literature by Jonathan Marks
by Elaine Morgan
Benveniste, Raoul E. and Todaro, George J. (1976) Evolution of type C viral genes: Evidence for an Asian origin of man. Nature, 261:101-107. This study also applied DNA hybridization to the apes. They found a 3-way split.
socrates.berkeley.edu/~jonmarks/biblio.html]
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Unexpected!
From carbon isotopes the whiz kids say that this beast/man chowed down on grass or sedges?
I’d like to know how this got figured out. What if they ate beef... which in turn ate the grass or sedges?
we weren’t allowed to eat meat until after the flood, no surprise here.
I’m surprised at how Mick Jagger can play bluesy harmonica the way he does...
That was the time of the first quotation of a divine affirmative statement in scripture about it; however the concept of animal sacrifices was much older (it was the point of friction between Cain and Abel), and the use of skins was obviously deemed okay. It would be surprising if in such a situation people yet remained vegetarians.
I’d want to know how the whiz kids deduced this. Humans and humanoid animals have traditionally been omnivores.
interesting but I doubt we know half of it
Well, it seems that very early man knew how to chew those pesky plants that soaked up CO2, to give him energy whilst balancing the CO2 of the planet for thousands of later generations to enjoy the sun on a beach
The use of skins was deemed okay because God Himself first made coverings for Adam and Eve out of an animal skin.
However the sacrifices were burnt offerings and they were consumed by the fire. Nowhere in the sacrifice rituals did anyone ever eat the animal after it was made a burnt offering to God.
Permission was given only after the flood, after the entire earth’s ecosystme had drastically changed. And at this time God put fear of man into animals because of this change, so that they wouldn’t be hunted to extinction.
This is, at best, speculation.
Quickly following on the heels of the Fall was a time when men stopped caring about the Lord. To assume that people remained faithful to a command to be vegetarian is naive.
I knew my ex-wife would use the Christmas present I bought her three years ago.
Sauteed ants.
Your viewpoint is as speculative as mine, as the fruit and vegetation before the flood grew greatly and was watered from below the ground, all various kinds of edible fruits and nuts and plants were in abundance and nobody would have needed to eat meat.
However, whether some did or didn’t, what is fact is that permission for peole to eat animals was not given until after the Flood, and the fear of man was not placed in animals until after the Flood.
LOL!!
It is a crucial point to the credibility of omnivore diets vs. vegetarian to note that disobedience was the norm — in fact meat may have been viewed not just as something nice but as an overtly pagan act.
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