Madagascans ate giant lemurs for dinner
The first humans that settled Madagascar around 2000 years ago probably hunted to extinction giant lemurs and other unusual animals, an upcoming report suggests.
Other animals the settlers feasted on when they arrived at the Indian Ocean island included birds that were about 3 metres tall, scientists say.
While the report does not rule out disease, fire and other factors that could have contributed to the giant lemurs' demise, it adds to the growing body of evidence that modern humans adversely affected the populations of prehistoric animals.
The study is part of ongoing research on the life and death of giant lemurs. Today's lemurs are the last living link to ancient primates that have a common link to the lineage that evolved into humans.
Lemurs' huge ancestors were apparently easy, meaty targets for early Madagascans, since researchers have just identified "definitive evidence of butchery" on the extinct lemur bones.
These included sharp cuts and chop marks near joints, oblique cuts along the shafts, spiral fractures, and percussion striae or skin stretch marks from pounding. These suggest skinning, disarticulation, or amputation at a joint, and filleting, says Ventura Perez, lead author of the paper, which will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.
Perez, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, adds that "careful scrutiny of the characteristics of the cut marks has allowed us to document butchery beyond any reasonable doubt".
Evidence for butchery
Previously, researchers found evidence for butchery on bones from extinct pygmy hippo bones, on a tooth of a type of lemur called an aye-aye, and extinct elephant birds.
Elephant birds (Aepyornis maximus) were particularly unusual creatures. They stood about 3 metres tall, weighed around 500 kilograms and had dinosaur-like feathered bodies.
Their 30 centimetre eggs were bigger than any dinosaur egg, and were the largest single-celled objects ever to have existed on Earth.
The giant lemurs, which began to die out 2000 years ago, also were "remarkable" animals, according to Gary Schwartz, one of the leaders of the ongoing giant lemur research project.
"Some had long, narrow faces, long forelimbs and huge feet," says Schwartz, assistant professor of physical anthropology at Arizona State University.
At about 90 kilograms, they were about the size of a female gorilla. The biggest lemur living today weighs only around 7 kilograms.
He says giant lemur babies had gestation periods longer than nine months and were born with full sets of teeth. Some also had "dog-like" noses and lapped water like a dog. Several species were omnivores that ate just about everything.
William Jungers, professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University, agrees with the findings.
"The evidence is unequivocal that the early [Madagascar] colonisers butchered and ate giant lemurs, as well as other large extinct species like the pygmy hippo and elephant birds," he says.
"Giant lemurs had few, if any, natural predators on Madagascar, so they would have been naive and relatively easy prey items.
"The lessons from lemur extinctions have profound implications for conservation biology and the fragile nature of living ecosystems. The role of people in extinctions around the world in undeniable, and Madagascar provides us with a detailed look at one of the world's last (and perhaps ongoing) megafaunal extinctions."