Posted on 11/20/2002 6:43:45 PM PST by VadeRetro
A composite image of the skulls of Pachycrocuta and H. erectus, left,shows how the giant hyena may have attacked the face. Beneath is a disgorged piece of an H. erectus thighbone. |
The pattern of damage on some of the skulls sheds light on how hyenas may have handled them. Bite marks on the brow ridge above the eyes indicate that this protrusion had been grasped and bitten by an animal in the course of chewing off the face. Most animals' facial bones are quite thin, and modern hyenas frequently attack or bite the face first; similarly, their ancient predecessors would likely have discovered this vulnerable region in H. erectus. Practically no such facial bones, whose structure is known to us from discoveries at other sites, have been found in the Longgushan cave.
The rest of the skull is a pretty tough nut to crack, however, even for Pachycrocuta, since it consists of bones half again as thick as those of a modern human, with massive mounds called tori above the eyes and ears and around the back of the skull. Puncture marks and elongated bite marks around the skulls reveal that the hyenas gnawed at and grappled with them, probably in an effort to crack open the cranium and consume the tasty, lipid-rich brain. We concluded that the hyenas probably succeeded best by chewing through the face, gaining a purchase on the bone surrounding the foramen magnum (the opening in the cranium where the spinal cord enters), and then gnawing away until the skull vault cracked apart or the opening was large enough to expose the brain. This is how we believe the skull bases were destroyed - not by the actions of cannibalistic H. erectus.
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Maybe there were very short periods of time, like at the end of last glaciation, when the Bering Land Bridge existed and there was a path clear of glaciers into the interior of the North American Continent.
'Course, what was probably really happening was something out of John Carpenter's The Thing, so maybe I don't wanna go.....
I saw the same thing. It was the ancestor to the Kodiak, or related to it. It was bigger than a modern horse and could run up to 40 mph. The head, teeth and appetite were, of course, just as impressive.
Boxtraps made of rock, pitfalls dug in snow, and deadfall traps caught larger animals such as foxes, wolves - even a few caribou. To catch a wolf, Eskimos occasionally used what one explored called 'the most fiendish trap ever devised' - sharpened splinters of caribou bone set into ice and smeared with blood and fat. When a wolf licked the bait, it slashed its tongue, and, goaded by the taste of its own fresh blood, kept lapping until it bled to death.
Something that huge, I can't see taking down with ones' hands or even spears, hunting them in a group!
I wouldn't want to have to handle such critters by low-tech means. Give me something center-fire, accurate, and non-jamming.
I like Turner and I like him a lot. However, you're letting him control the argument by agreeing with him on the 14k year date, which I don't.
How did the 80k year old Jomon and the less old Ainu get to Asia? (They came across Siberia, that's how.)
Whether that was 14k years ago or not is still subject to debate, and recently it's been a moving target. Regardless, it is only in the very recent past that it occurred, even if it was only 100,000 years ago.
The Bering land bridge is still the only mechanism which can explain a migration. Kon-tiki boats aren't very plausible for that, especially the earlier you get on the timeline.
There is no reason that I know of that there couldn't have been several distinct waves of human migration to the Americas, preceding Clovis Man by thousands of years. They should have been more thoughtful, though, and left us some bones. ;-)
This is nearly as an exciting evolutionary 'discovery' as T. Rex, and what a movie this would make... 'how to die as nastily as a great white attack but on land with a 40-pack.'
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