Forty-eight pieces of human hair found in fossilized hyena dung, first discovered several years ago in a cave in South Africa, suggests that our ancestors not only lived among the African carnivoes, but were likely eaten by them some 257,000 years ago, Discovery News reports.
"Based on the fossil hairs identified here, this research has established that brown hyenas shared the Sterkfontein Valley with hominins, warthog, impala, zebra and kudu," authors Phillip Taru and Lucinda Backwell of the University of the Witwatersrand wrote in their new study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Twelve fossilized pieces of hyena dung were found in a "hyena latrine" in Sterkfontein Valley and was recently re-tested using an electron micropscope. A number of possibilities presented by the researchers may explain why the human hair made its appearance. The hyena could have eaten a human, scavenged a humans' dead body, or just happened to consume a stray blob of hair.
One thing is clear however: humans lived among the hyenas in the Valley, the piece of hair providing evidence of inland occupation by archaic Homo sapiens or modern humans," the researchers wrote.
Life in caves for early humans was likely rough, and hair abrasion could have resulted from inhabitating the rocky crevices, thus leading to a lack of scales within the found hair follice.
"A lack of hair scales has been documented in human hair subject to pathology, a condition observed when studying our diabetic colleague's hair as part of the human comparative sample," Taru and Backwell explained.
The fossils also provide scientists insight into the mammal community of the Middle Pleistocene, including early humans.
Click here to see a photo of the fossilized hyena dung that may provide clues as to how our early ancestors lived and died.
