A unique hominin menu dated to 1.95 million years ago

摘要

Research on ancient foragers has tended to focus on their acquisition of large land mammals, but our ancestors in fact exploited a wider range of taxa. Depending on the local environment, this range included tortoises, birds, and hares from terrestrial habitats and mollusks, birds, and fish from aquatic habitats. These small terrestrial animals and aquatic species begin to appear occasionally in the archaeological record during the Middle Pleistocene (<780,000 y ago), occur irregularly until the Late Pleistocene (<130,000 y ago), and are abundant only within the past few tens of thousands of years (1-6).