From today's Washington Post, as reported yesterday in Science
magazine. Note the paragraphs below that discuss diet.......

Two fossil skulls unearthed in the Black Sea republic of Georgia are
the oldest human ancestor remains ever found on the Eurasian land mass
and probably represent part of the first migration out of Africa by
human ancestors, researchers reported yesterday.

An international team of scientists said the two skulls are 1.7
million years old and show close similarities to contemporary fossils
from East Africa, while having little in common with remains found
later in Europe and Asia.

"They were able to leave Africa by the Levantine corridor, travel
through the Near East and into Georgia," said Georgia State Museum
paleontologist David Lordkipandze, who leads the excavation at
Dmanisi, 50 miles southwest of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Results
of the team's research are reported in today's edition of the journal
Science.

The Dmanisi find is the best evidence yet of an early departure from
humankind's point of origin in Africa at a time when ancestors there
had just evolved into long-legged species capable of walking long
distances.

Team member Susan Anton, a University of Florida anthropologist,
said the two fossils--one "skullcap" and one nearly intact skull
--"look very much like" contemporary remains of a species known as
Homo ergaster that were found at the famous East African site of
Koobi Fora.

Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins program,
suggested that "what's neat" about the Dmanisi find is that it
confirms events in Africa, where early humans lived "very close
to water, but starting around 1.7 million years ago, you found
them dispersing into new environments."

Potts noted that East Africa had a lot of volcanic activity
beginning 1.7 million years ago. Lakes and rivers shrank and
expanded, endangering food supplies:
"One way to respond to these changes is become more mobile,"
Potts said. "A biped totally committed to walking finds a greater
diversity of settings. The Dmanisi finding says they could range
far enough to get out of Africa."

Besides the skulls and some animal bones, the team also recovered
more than 1,000 stone artifacts, most of them chunks of basalt used
for chopping and scraping. Until Dmanisi, it was thought that human
ancestors left Africa only when they had developed more sophisticated,
double-faced tools, noted geologist Carl Swisher of the Berkeley
Geochronology Center.

"So the reason for the [Dmanisi] emigration and expansion is not
technologically driven," Swisher said. "It is biological," he said,
suggesting that the migrants may have departed in pursuit of large
animal herds heading north.

"The interesting thing is that this is the first hominid species
[human ancestor] who looks modern," Swisher said. "He's long-legged,
short-armed, 5 feet 6 inches tall. He's a carnivore now and a runner.
He's got more range."

But with only crudely crafted stones to use as tools and
weapons--and a brain capacity about half that of modern humans
--the migrants were probably poor hunters. Swisher suggested they
may have been scavengers, stalking herds of antelope as they headed
north and swooping down on crippled animals--"the Pleistocene
equivalent of road kill."
--
Liza May, M.S.
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phone:(301)261-0555  fax:(410)451-6105