Ancient creature wasn't picky eater, research shows

An upright, ape-like creature that lived alongside ancestral humans in Africa more than a million years ago had a far more diverse diet than once believed. The finding casts doubt on the long held belief that the creature was driven to extinction by its picky eating habits, University of Colorado researchers conclude.

The new study shows that Paranthropus robustus, once thought to be a "chewing machine" specializing in tough, low-quality plant foods, instead had a diverse diet ranging from fruits and nuts to sedges, grasses, seeds and perhaps even animals, according to CU anthropologist Matt Sponheimer. That conclusion is based on a chemical analysis of four Paranthropus teeth.

Paranthropus was part of a line of early human relatives known as australopithecines that includes the famous Ethiopian fossil Lucy that lived more than 3 million years ago. Lucy is regarded by many anthropologists as the matriarch of modern humans.

"One line of Lucy's children ultimately led to modern humans, while the other was an evolutionary dead end," Sponheimer said. "Since we have now shown Paranthropus was flexible in its eating habits over both short and long intervals, we probably need to look to other biological, cultural or social differences to explain its ultimate fate."

A report from Sponheimer and his colleagues appears in Friday's edition of the journal "Science."

An upright, ape-like creature known as Paranthropus robustus (skull shown above) that lived alongside ancestral humans in Africa more than a million years ago had a far more diverse diet than once believed. A chemical analysis of four Paranthropus teeth by CU researcher Matt Sponheimer indicates Paranthropus had a diverse diet ranging from fruits and nuts to sedges, grasses, seeds and perhaps even animals.

"I don't normally do unsolicited pings but thought this might interest you..."

It does, please keep pinging me to these articles.

I thought it was funny because FReeper Pharmboy just growled at me for posting (essentially) the same article earlier myself, lol. I say, the more the merrier.

This human relative sacrificed brain power for muscle power.

This was an evolutionary dead-end in that bipedal apes were never going to win the race based on brawn. Every other animal beats us hands down on basic speed, power and dental characteristics.

We won the race when our brains caught up to our bipedal arms, hands and speech capabilities.

"we probably need to look to other biological, cultural or social differences to explain its ultimate fate."

Cultural and social aspects of this creature are indeed fascinating. I suspect that real advancement can be made if they focus their research in these areas. The evidence for their cultural and social traditions is a million years old, but with the right sized grant, I think it can be thoroughly documented.

Fascinating article. Too bad someone always has to interject an unscientific opinion in order to further their ideology.

"One line of Lucy's children ultimately led to modern humans, while the other was an evolutionary dead end,"

That's not science, that's an assumption presented as a fact in order to proselytize the readers.
A Rare Meeting of the Minds

Courtly paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens of the Collège de France in Paris--who co-discovered Lucy's species--politely demurred with Johanson's view at the meeting. Coppens maintains that two species of hominids lived at Hadar--and that neither led to modern humans.

[snip]

If Orrorin was more modern than Lucy, it must have given rise to the Homo lineage that led to modern humans, Senut and Pickford say. That would bump most of the fossils found by the other teams in the room, including Lucy, off the line leading to Homo.

[snip]

Johanson applied a little spin control. "Every person here has a slightly different idea how to draw the [human family] tree," he told a group of French science teachers invited to the last session. "But you should not let this distract you that there is probably more consensus about human origins today than ever before." For example, although researchers argue over which early fossil was even a hominid, much less the first, each of the competing teams has independently concluded that their primate lived in the forest, not the savanna.

Sounds more like a "brag fest" than true science. Each person wants to be the guy who discovered the earliest hominid ancestor.

DR. MEAVE LEAKEY: We always need to find more individuals, and definitely the more you have, the more you understand. We can tell that it's different from Lucy, but we certainly can't say this is definitely the ancestor of us, or that Lucy is definitely the ancestor of us.

Thanks blam. Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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