Resumen de Investigating the Role of Eagles as Accumulating Agents in the Dolomitic Cave Infills of South Africa
Darryl J. de Ruiter, Sandi R. Copeland, Julia Lee-Thorp, Matt Sponheimer
The potential importance of large raptors as accumulators of early hominis was highligted by the suggestion that the Taung Child was killed and deposited an eagle (Berger & Clarke (1995) Journal of Human Evolution, 29: 275-299), and it has been hypothesized that eagles might have had a significant impact on the evolution of predator avoidance behaviors in early hominins (Berger & McGraw (2007) South African Journal of Science, 103: 496-498). In the study, we cave infills of South Africa to a series of modern eagle-derived bone accumulations. We Valley that allow us to source fossils to particular geological subtrates. Of the fourteen discrete faunal assemblages examined, nine were inconsistent with eagles as accumulators of procaviids or cercopithecids, while five revealed possible, though not definitive, evidence of eagle involment. A lack of support for eagles as collectors of the smaller mammals that make up their typical prey weakens the hypothesis that eagles represented a significant threat to the large, presumably more difficult to capture, juvenile hominins. The majority of the animals sampled for 87Sr/86 Sr ratios at Swartkrans were consistent with being derived from local dolomites, including fuor Papio specimens, while we documented a non-local origin for a single procaviid and a single bovid from the Hanging Remnant of Member 1. In contrast, all of the procaviid specimens and a single bovid specimen from Sterkfontein Member 4 exhibited non-local strontium signals. Turning to the Taung Child, at present a clear link between it and the original Taung faunal assemblage examined by Raymond Dart cannot be established. In addition, preparation damage cannot be ruled out as the sourece of several marks on the Taung skull that have been putatively assigned to eagle talon damage. As a result, the hypothesized influence of large raptors such as eagles on the evolution of predator avoidance strategies in early hominins remains intriguing but unsubstantiated.
