Evidence of termite foraging by Swartkrans early hominids.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Backwell LR
PROVIDER: S-EPMC29261 | biostudies-literature | 2001 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Evidence of termite foraging by Swartkrans early hominids.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20010116 4
Previous studies have suggested that modified bones from the Lower Paleolithic sites of Swartkrans and Sterkfontein in South Africa represent the oldest known bone tools and that they were used by Australopithecus robustus to dig up tubers. Macroscopic and microscopic analysis of the wear patterns on the purported bone tools, pseudo bone tools produced naturally by known taphonomic processes, and experimentally used bone tools confirm the anthropic origin of the modifications. However, our analy ...[more]
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