... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Man The Scavenger Some 2 million years ago, man's supposed ancestors were meat-eaters. But were they noble hunters with dominion over other life forms? Probably not! The analysis of tool marks on ancient animal bones tells us that human tool marks predominate in regions of the bones where there was little meat, as if ancient humans were dismembering the animals for skins and other products. On the meat-bearing portions of the bones, the tooth marks of non-human carnivores predominate. Where the tool marks overlap the tooth marks of other carnivores, the tool marks are mostly on top of the tooth marks. The gist of the tool-mark analysis is that humans got to the animals second -- after the non-human carnivores. In other words, ancient humans were probably meat scavengers -- opportunists rather than the noble hunters often portrayed. As a matter of fact, one characteristic of a scavenger species is its ability to cover wide areas with little expenditure of energy, like the vultures. Now, human bipedalism is pitifully poor for running down game but great for searching far and wide with minimum physical effort. Tooth-wear studies of ancient human skulls indicate that humans were vegetarians first and meat-eaters second. This situation was suddenly reversed when Homo erectus came along. Then, according to toothwear patterns, there was a shift to a mainly meat diet. This was also the time when ...

... in April 1976 in an inclined position in a diatomite unit in the Miguelito Mine at Lompoc, California, was not buried while 'standing on its tail'. An onsite investigation has revealed that the diatomite unit which entombed the whale is also inclined at the same angle, the whale having been buried in the diatomite unit while both were in the horizontal position, and subsequent earth movements having tilted both. Nevertheless, this whale fossil still bears testimony to its catastrophic burial, and thus the catastrophic deposition of the enclosing diatomite. "The current uniformitarian (slow and gradual) model for diatomite deposition, as seen in the Guaymas Basin of the Gulf of California, is not capable of explaining the purity of the Lompoc diatomite...the deposition rate is too slow to avoid corrosion and scavenging of the bones. both of which are absent from the Lompoc whale bones." (Snelling, Andrew A.; "The Whale Fossil in Diatomite, Lompoc, California," CEN Technical Journal, 9:244, 1995. This is an Australian creationist journal.) Comment. The Lompoc whale fossil does suggest very rapid deposition, but it does not prove that 4.5 billion years of geological history can be compressed into the requisite 6,000 years! Reference. The Lompoc deposit and many others like it are cataloged in ESD2 in the catalog volume: Neglected Geological Anomalies. For details on this book, visit: here . The Lompoc diatomite bed (left) and fossile whale, as found excavated in 1976. From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR ...