Diets altered millions of years ago

Our diets changed 3.5million years ago, a study says

By Nicole Hamer |

13:13 05 June 2013

Do you ever wonder why we eat some things and not others? Why, for instance, some animals only eat vegetation, and yet we can consume both meat and vegetation if we so wish?

Well, human ancestors’ diets supposedly changed millions of years before we today were born. According to a study, this came about around 3.5million years ago.

Information from four papers has been published in the National Academy of Sciences.

Research has concentrated on certain fossils of human teeth from earlier days, in Africa, and come to a conclusion. The new study suggests that the diet of humans then, who were known as hominins, was changed whereby grass was also eaten.

And possibly animals may also have been included in early human diets, although it is understood this has not been confirmed, as reported by the BBC.

It is believed that human ancestors consumed things such as fruit and certain leaves, the leader of one of the papers Professor Matt Sponheimer, of the University of Colorado, has said as reported by Xinhua.

Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, California Academy of Sciences, who co-wrote two of the papers, said: “What we have is chemical information on what our ancestors ate, which in simpler terms is like a piece of food item stuck between their teeth and preserved for millions of years.”