Australopithecine tool use

Question 1

Why does the article refer to Australopithecines as ‘butchers’?

Answer 1

• Fossilized bones of two animals show clear evidence of early humans using stones to remove scraps of flesh from the carcasses of large mammals.
• These bones were found in a region where the sediments are at least 3.2 million years old

Question 2

What did the bones show?

Answer 2

• Scraping off of animal flesh using tools
• Scraping of the bone marrow shows these early humans ate bone marrow
• Tool users incurred the cost of transporting stones 6 kilometres from where they occurred naturally to the site where the butchery took place.

Question 3

Who did the study?

Answer 3

McPherron et al. 2010

Question 4

What species are suspected to have made the tools/bone scrapings?

Answer 4

• No hominids species found near bones
• A. afarensis specimens have been found in the Dikika region (Ethiopia) that date around the same time