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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
There’s nothing like a good steak. And our Australopithecus afarensis ancestors apparently1 felt the same way. Because new discoveries from Ethiopia show that what was likely the species of the famous fossil Lucy used stone tools to butcher meat from big mammals—about 3.4 million years ago. That’s a million years earlier than our best previous evidence for human ancestor stone tool use and meat eating. The finding appears on the cover of the journal Nature.
The research team found two fossil bones with cut and scrape marks, signs of meat carving2. One bone was a piece of rib3 from a cow-sized mammal; the other, a leg bone fragment from a mammal the size of a goat. The bones also had percussion4 marks, sustained while Lucy’s friends smashed the bones to get at the marrow5.
It looks like the ancient tool users collected stones that happened to have shapes conducive6 to butchering, the way kids select particular stones with good potential to skip on water. But future expeditions will look for evidence for any attempts at shaping stones into kitchen utensils7. Because after 3.4 million years, Lucy and her fellow afarensis keep surprising us.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.
1 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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2 carving | |
n.雕刻品,雕花 | |
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3 rib | |
n.肋骨,肋状物 | |
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4 percussion | |
n.打击乐器;冲突,撞击;震动,音响 | |
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5 marrow | |
n.骨髓;精华;活力 | |
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6 conducive | |
adj.有益的,有助的 | |
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7 utensils | |
器具,用具,器皿( utensil的名词复数 ); 器物 | |
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