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WASHINGTON — After a half-century of referring to a pre-human as “Nutcracker Man” because of his large teeth and powerful jaw, scientists now think he chewed grasses instead.
The new report appears today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Thure Cerling of the University of Utah and colleagues analyzed the carbon in 24 teeth from 22 individuals who lived in East Africa between 1.4 million and 1.9 million years ago. One type of carbon is produced from tree leaves, nuts and fruit; another from grasses and grasslike plants.
It turns out that the early human known as Paranthropus boisei did not eat nuts but dined more heavily on grasses than any other human ancestor or human relative studied to date.
