Scientists have claimed that an ancient human relative was “a primate equivalent of a cow who had huge teeth and liked to eat grass”.
The hominid, known as Paranthropus boisei, ranged across the African landscape more than one million years ago and lived side-by-side with direct ancestors of humans, say the scientists from University of Colorado Boulder. Lead scientist Prof. Matt Sponheimer said it was long assumed Paranthropus boisei ate nuts, seeds and hard fruit due to its powerful jaw muscles and the biggest and flattest molars of any known hominid. However, he said in recent years study of the wear marks of teeth from Nutcracker Man by other research teams has indicated it was likely eating items like fruit and grasses.
That evidence, combined with the latest study that measured the carbon isotopes embedded in fossil teeth to infer diet, indicates the rugged jaw and large, flat tooth structure may have been just the ticket for Nutcracker Man to mow down and swallow huge amounts of grasses or sedges at a single sitting. Prof. Sponheimer said:
For their study, the scientists removed tiny amounts of enamel from 22 Paranthropus boisei teeth, each of which contained carbon isotopes absorbed from the types of food eaten during the lifetime of each individual.