Remember that time machine I talked about? Going back in time maybe is not as cool as I thought.

Researcher: Early Man Was Hunted by Birds

A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds. “These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared,” Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924.
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Researchers had speculated the Taung child was killed by a leopard or saber-toothed feline. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory the hunter was a large predatory bird, based on the fact most of the other fossils found at the same site were small monkeys that showed signs of having been killed by a predatory bird. Berger and Clarke had until now been unable to show damage on the child’s skull that could have been done by a bird. Five months ago, Berger read an Ohio State University study of the hunting abilities of modern eagles in West Africa believed similar to predatory birds of the Taung child’s era.

The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets.

Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before.

If I do finally get my flux capacitor working (unlikely as I am still missing my sawzall) , I hope I remember to bring a helmet back in time with me. A giant bird poking a hole in my skull, waiting for me to die and then eating my brain is something I’d like to avoid if at all possible.

Aw, who am I kidding? The CEO will be armored like a tank and armed to the gills once I get that baby up and running. No reason to risk an unarmed run-in with a hungry Velociraptor, a ticked-off Neanderthal, or an angry Mongol. A marauding Viking Horde though? I might try to join, or even start one of my own.