How the Taung child died
At least one pre-human child was killed not by a ground-based predator as previously thought but by a bird of prey. This story gives me the heebie-jeebies for some reason, even though the death in question happened two million years ago. The Taung child’s skull, discovered in 1924, was the first fossil identified as belonging to Australopithecus africanus. It’s long been thought that the child was killed by a large feline predator, but previously unnoticed marks on the skull indicate that instead the two- or three-year-old child was done in by a bird of prey that carried it off to its nest for dinner. The bird scooped out the eyes, and that left distinctive marks on the skull that are similar to those eagles leave on the skulls of their small primate prey today. I don’t know why it seems worse to know that this kid was carried off by a bird than it does to think he was mauled by a tiger; maybe I’ve just had years to get used to the fact that humans get eaten by big cats but I’ve never thought of us as vulnerable to birds of prey. Perhaps this vulnerability influenced some of our more characteristic behaviors, like walking upright. Thanks to Mark D. for passing this one along.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1222947.htm
