Human ancestor diet ‘shows they lived in forests’

CAPE TOWN — Australopithecus sediba, the 2-million-year-old South African human ancestor, probably survived on a diet that included bark, leaves, and fruit, according to analysis of its fossilised teeth.

The results are surprising, as they suggest eating habits quite different to most early African hominins studied so far, which typically ate tropical grasses, sedges and the animals that ate these plants.

The food Au. sediba put in its mouth was similar to that eaten by modern-day chimpanzees, and suggests they lived in forests — rather than the open savannah favoured by many other hominid species, said Amanda Henry, lead author of a letter in this week’s edition of the journal Nature, describing an analysis of the fossilised Au. sediba’s teeth.

This argument is consistent with previous work on the fossils, which suggested that they were tree climbers. "Diet can tell us a lot about how they behaved and lived. We know that among primates, the ones living in closed forest environments tend to live in smaller groups than those living in grasslands. We could hypothesise that perhaps sediba lived in small groups … and travelled long distances to find food," she said.


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