Around 1.4 million years ago, ancient humans in Spain used to scavenge for food at a site that also served as a latrine for giant hyenas.
Fuente Nueva 3 in south-eastern Spain is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Europe associated with ancient hominins. As well as a large collection of primitive stone tools, excavations at the site have uncovered hundreds of examples of fossilised faeces, known as coprolites.
at the University of Malaga in Spain and his colleagues analysed 216 of these coprolites with techniques including electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. They also compared the coprolites with the faeces of modern-day spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta). Hyena clans often defecate repeatedly in particular places called latrines, possibly to mark their territory.
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The results revealed that the coprolites came from giant, short-faced hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris). 鈥淭he composition of the coprolites is identical to that of the hyena coprolites collected from a number of Pleistocene sites,鈥� says Palmqvist. 鈥淭hey also have the same geochemical, mineralogical signatures and the same presence of small pieces of bones as seen in extant hyenas.鈥� The presence of so many coprolites strongly suggests the giant hyenas used the site as a latrine.
Digs at the site have also yielded numerous stone tools and the bones of mammals, such as mammoths, horses, bison, weasels and water buffalo. Many bones bear cut marks and signs of marrow extraction, hinting that they were butchered by humans.
Palmqvist and his colleagues think both the hyenas and hominins scavenged on leftovers of prey that had been killed by sabre-toothed cats and abandoned. It is likely that the hominins visited the site during the day, while the hyenas fed and left their droppings there at night.
However, there might be another reason why so many bones from megaherbivores, such as mammoths, rhinos and hippos, are found there: indicates that the site may have been covered by quicksand.
鈥淲e think that some of the carcasses came from animals which got trapped in the quicksand,鈥� says Palmqvist. He points to the skeleton of a female mammoth with missing limbs, which was surrounded by stone tools, as well as 34 coprolites. This indicates that hyenas visited the carcass multiple times, and the hominins probably chopped off its legs to eat somewhere safer, he says.
However, the researchers can鈥檛 rule out the possibility that hyenas were at the site some years after the humans feasted on the herbivores.
鈥淚 think the researchers have done a solid job of analysing the fossilised hyena poop and identifying Pachycrocuta as its source,鈥� says at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. 鈥淭heir use of surrounding evidence to conclude that it was a hyena latrine is remarkable.鈥�
Pobiner isn鈥檛 entirely convinced that the upper layer behaved as quicksand that trapped the elephants and rhinos, but the scenario is 鈥渋ntriguing鈥�, she says.
Palmqvist says his team is now performing sedimentological analysis of the soil and working on estimating the weights of the megaherbivores to gather more evidence for the quicksand hypothesis.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
