Exceptional biting capacities of the Early Pleistocene fossil shrew Beremendia fissidens (Soricidae,Eulipotyphla, Mammalia): new taphonomic evidence

The discovery of small, very well-defined and perfectly preserved toothmarks on a humerus of a mole Talpa cf. europaea from level TE9 of Sima del Elefante (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos) with a chronology of the Early Pleistocene is extraordinary. In a previous paper, this bite was compared with current small carnivores such as Mustela nivalis molars and with fossil remains of Mustela palerminea and the soricid (Eulipotyphla and Mammalia) Beremendia fissidens with the purpose of identifying the predator. It was hypothesised that Beremendia fissidens could be the bite maker. However, it was not possible to rule out other predators due to the shortage of Beremendia fissidens remains. Recently, new fossil remains of this insectivore have been found in Sima del Elefante levels, allowing the upper dentition to be measured. These new data suggest that effectively Beremendia fissidens may have had the capacity to bite prey larger than itself, even though it did not possess morphological characteristics specialised for the consumption of small mammals. The addition of small vertebrates (like talpids) to complement a diet based on insects could have been a way of responding to the needs of the high metabolic rate characteristic of Beremendia fissidens.     

Early hominid hunting and scavenging: A zooarcheological review

Before the early 1980s, the prevailing orthodoxy in paleoanthropology considered Early Stone Age archeological sites in East Africa to represent a primitive form of hominid campsites. The faunal evidence preserved in these sites was viewed as the refuse of carcass meals provided by hominid males in a social system presumptively characterized by sexual division of labor. This interpretation of early hominid life ways, commonly known as the “Home Base” or “Food Sharing” model, was developed most fully by Glynn Isaac.^1–4 As Bunn and Stanford⁵ emphasized, this model was greatly influenced by a paradigm that coalesced between 1966 and 1968, referred to as “Man the Hunter.”⁶