[SunkenCiv]

End result. These sediments at El Salt in Spain contain tiny coprolites with parasites, which may be the remains of ancient meals from Neandertals. [BERTILA GALVÁN]

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This is news to the "scientists?"

[flaglady47]

Neandervegans.

[cripplecreek]

Are you “logged” in?

[Cobra64]

What’s with all the fecal/poop posts these last few days? Who gives a $hit that people ate vegetables 80 million years ago?

[factoryrat]

They just chewed on vegetables to get the meat out from between their teeth.

~OR~

It was a poor substitute for real bacon flavor.

I have a theory that the Neanderthal died out because they ran out of hickory to cure their bacon.

[catnipman]

Actually, it revealed that Neanderthals mostly ate meat. But of course that goes against the grain of “Progressive” thought that tries to vilify meat because of animal methane byproducts that supposedly contribute to, gasp, GLOBAL WARMING, oops, I mean CLIMATE CHANGE, you know that earthly process that has been occurring unstoppably now for at least a billion years.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Well one could say the article is crappy.

[Veggie Todd]

I wonder how many million$ the US Government donated for this study.

[Chode]

i guess that would be the gathering part of hunter/gatherer life...

[onedoug]

Todays Neanderthal duty thread. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s.

[KarlInOhio]

The tests revealed that the poop “clearly” contained high proportions of cholesterol and coprostanol from eating meat, but it also included significant plant sterols that “unambiguously record the ingestion of plants,” the researchers report today in PLOS ONE...

How about some percentages rather than "high proportions" and "significant"? The other articles I saw on this claimed this meant that most of the diet was meat with some plants. This article seems to imply a large amount of plants.

However, “the study is really exciting,” says Henry, author of the earlier study of Neandertal dental plaque that showed that a Neandertal in Iraq ate plants. “If they are correct, this is one more nail in the coffin for the idea that Neandertals were obligate carnivores.”

Obligate carnivores? Who could look at the teeth of a neanderthal or modern human and consider them "obligate carnivores". We have omnivores' teeth with a mixture of incisors, cuspids and molars unlike a cat's teeth. Also the typical view of early humans is as hunter/gatherers. The gatherers weren't just picking up meat... they gathered plants. And modern humans aren't able to produce certain chemicals they need which can only come from plants, and I expect that neanderthals were the same. Vitamin C comes at the top of that list.

[left that other site]

I always wanted to be an archaeologist!

Till I found out about coprolite.

Nevertheless, please put me on the GGG list...i need a little break form politics! :-)

[boop]

LOVE all the qualifiers in the caption.

"Sedimentation MAY be the remains of ancient meals from Neanderthals".

Or, it could be ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL.

I generally enjoy scientific "speculation", and often times turns out correct.

But how many times has it turned out to be complete nonsense?

[RegulatorCountry]

Does anyone else find the nearly ubiquitous use of “veggies” instead of “vegetables” to be annoyingly juvenile, especially in a reputedly scholarly article?