Posted on 11/12/2018 8:17:05 AM PST by Gamecock
A few years ago, a team of researchers in Poland came across a pair of Neanderthal bones that held a grisly secret: Their owner had been eaten by a giant bird.
The two finger bones belonged to a Neanderthal child who had died roughly 115,000 years before, making those bones the oldest known human remains from Poland, according to Science In Poland.
Once the bones were analyzed, the scientists concluded that the hand bones were porous because they had passed through the digestive system of a large bird.
It is unclear if the bird killed the child and then ate him or if the animal simply scavenged on the child’s already-dead body, but researchers say that “neither option can be ruled out at this point.”
No matter what happened, these bones are a remarkable discovery. The researchers said that this is the first known example from the Ice Age of bones passing through a bird’s digestive system.
Neanderthals, which are very close relatives of modern humans, most likely popped up in Poland around 300,000 years ago and died out about 35,000 years ago.
Professor Paweł Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków says that he can count the number of unearthed Neanderthal remains on a single hand, including the child’s finger bones.
This groundbreaking discovery was almost overlooked because, when the phalange bones were first found in the cave, they were accidentally mixed up with animal bones. It wasn’t until a laboratory analysis was conducted on the bones that scientists figured out how important they were.
The analysis showed that the child was somewhere between five and seven-years-old when he died. The bones are tiny, less than one centimeter long, and are poorly preserved so scientists will unfortunately not be able to conduct DNA analysis on them.
Despite this setback, the scientists are confident that they belonged to a Neanderthal.
“We have no doubts that these are Neanderthal remains because they come from a very deep layer of the cave, a few meters below the present surface,” Dr. Valde-Nowak said. “This layer also contains typical stone tools used by the Neanderthal.”
Dr. Valde-Nowak added that just because the bones were discovered in the cave, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Neanderthals used it as a permanent residence. He said that it is entirely possible that they just used it seasonally.
It’s remarkable to think that a poor child who might’ve been killed by a giant bird thousands of years ago has given Poland one of its greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.
Pretty interesting stuff.
That’s a big ####ing bird!!!
You’d need like 20 pounds of stuffing!!
So Big Bird is Polish?
Was probably flipping the bird off, and got his finger bitten off.
So remember next time you eat a chicken sandwich, you are only evening the score.
ROFL!!!!
Revenge never leads to any good!!!!
Unless it’s got great gravy on it and good sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae
‘Terror Birds’ were in South America, not Europe.
More likely passed through a vulture.
In Paleolithic Age, chicken eat you.
So the bird raided a Neanderthal cave and was killed there after eating the kid? Or did the bird eat the kid and the Neanderthals kill it and drag it back home?
It seems odd that bones belonging to a Neanderthal who passed through a giant bird would be found in the camp/cave of his fellow Neanderthals.
The kid was bird bait.
Those look like Terror birds and as a commenter pointed out at the source, they were long gone before this child died.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150727-the-reign-of-the-terror-birds
Not if the Neanderthals caught him and cooked him for dinner.
Well, the bird is the word.
(Thought you guys had us there for awhile, I’m stunned we were able to come back)
Died out 40 million years ago, they were closer to the dinosaurs than the Neanderthals.
But they call the kid "a poor child." So even without DNA testing they were able to discover the socio-economic status of the kid's family.
” they come from a very deep layer of the cave,
Dr. Valde-Nowak added that just because the bones were discovered in the cave, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Neanderthals used it as a permanent residence. He said that it is entirely possible that they just used it seasonally”
And shared it with large carnivorous birds? Or maybe the birds just liked to use the cave as a bathroom? How about the Neanderthals brought the bird poop into the cave themselves? And the final question? How did they determine that the partially digested bone had passed through a bird and not , say a sabre tooth tiger? Just askin
How many giant, Polish birds does it take
to eat the Neanderthal child?
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