Hippo burger

 

I admit that I never really cared about "Paranthropus" before, but clearly I should have! An extinct sister group to the genus Homo, the paranthropi (I assume that´s the plural, LOL) were huge, bipedal herbivores. Or were they? A recent excavation in Kenya (where else?) may problematize this picture, although we can´t really be sure until further and perhaps sensational new finds are uncovered. 

The site is about 3 million years old, features some Paranthropus teeth and a number of Oldowan tools, in fact the oldest such tools ever discovered. Oldowan is the first known "stone tool industry", but it´s usually associated with Australopithecus and/or early Homo. If Paranthropus used identical tools, that sure raises all kinds of questions. Did they steal them from australopithecines, manufacture them themselves, or what? Whoever used the tools at the site, were butchering dead hippopotami. That doesn´t sound like a herbivore to me...

One possibility, mentioned only in jest by the content-creator above, is that both the hippos and the poor Paranthropus found at the site were butchered by party or parties unknown. But why is that so far fetched? Maybe someone in East Africa 3 million years ago liked to feast on the tender flesh of herbivorous ape-people? The possibility entertained by the scientists who made the discovery is apparently that Paranthropus was omnivorous. Perhaps it could opportunistically adapt to eating meat when such became available. I seem to recall that even the "vegan" bonobo doesn´t say no to munching on other Animalia, perhaps to the consternation of dietary fanaticos in the Golden State. 

I think Erika (the content-creator, who looks like a real nerd) points out that if even Paranthropus could make and/or use tools and butcher dead animals, that would make humans even less unique than before...again! This is an apt point. Especially since we are dealing with the "wrong" side branch of evolution. That some chimp-like direct ancestor to Homo invented tool use is still compatible with the idea that the fair Victorian gentleman (or American astronaut, or perhaps nerdy paleoanthropologist?) is the ultimate end-point of abiogenesis and evolution. 

The discovery that the first tools may have belonged to a mini-gorilla squatch on the wrong side of hominin progress who used them to help itself to a hippo burger now and then, while otherwise being hooked on such primitive diets as grass and fruits, does put things in some (perhaps unwanted) perspective. Tools weren´t heroically invented by chimp-like proto-scientists, and then off to the stars, but by some gorilla-man who simply wanted a better Friday snack! 

But sure, the Victorians could still say that the tools were thankfully co-opted by more able ape-men...