12 Of The Most Important History News Stories Of 2018

Published December 21, 2018
Updated May 15, 2019

115,000-Year-Old Bones Of Neanderthal Child Eaten By Gigantic Prehistoric Bird Found

Neanderthal Finger Bones

PAP/Jacek BednarczykThe tiny finger bones belonging to the Neanderthal child.

A few years ago, a team of researchers in Poland came across a pair of Neanderthal bones that held a grisly secret: Their owner had been eaten by a giant bird.

The two finger bones belonged to a Neanderthal child who had died roughly 115,000 years before, making those bones the oldest known human remains from Poland, according to Science In Poland.

Once the bones were analyzed, the scientists concluded that the hand bones were porous because they had passed through the digestive system of a large bird.

It is unclear if the bird killed the child and then ate him or if the animal simply scavenged on the child’s already-dead body, but researchers say that “neither option can be ruled out at this point.”

No matter what happened, these bones are a remarkable discovery. The researchers said that this is the first known example from the Ice Age of bones passing through a bird’s digestive system.

Researchers Digging In Ciemna Cave

Paweł Valde-NowakA team of researchers conducting an excavation in Cave Ciemna.

Professor Paweł Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków says that he can count the number of unearthed Neanderthal remains on a single hand, including the child’s finger bones.

This groundbreaking discovery was almost overlooked because, when the phalange bones were first found in the cave, they were accidentally mixed up with animal bones. It wasn’t until a laboratory analysis was conducted on the bones that scientists figured out how important they were.

“We have no doubts that these are Neanderthal remains because they come from a very deep layer of the cave, a few meters below the present surface,” Dr. Valde-Nowak said. “This layer also contains typical stone tools used by the Neanderthal.”

It’s remarkable to think that a poor child who might’ve been killed by a giant bird thousands of years ago has given Poland one of its greatest archaeological discoveries of all time in history news.

author
Bernadette Deron
author
Bernadette Deron is a digital media producer and writer from New York City who holds a Master's in publishing from New York University. Her work has appeared in Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Insider.
editor
Leah Silverman
editor
A former associate editor for All That's Interesting, Leah Silverman holds a Master's in Fine Arts from Columbia University's Creative Writing Program and her work has appeared in Catapult, Town & Country, Women's Health, and Publishers Weekly.
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Deron, Bernadette. "12 Of The Most Important History News Stories Of 2018." AllThatsInteresting.com, December 21, 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/history-news-2018. Accessed July 3, 2024.