Study Suggests Hominins Hunted Beavers 400,000 Years Ago

MAINZ, GERMANY—SciNews reports that Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of Johannes Gutenberg University and her colleagues examined nearly 2,000 beaver teeth and more than 500 beaver bones unearthed at Bilzingsleben, a 400,000-year-old archaeological site in central Germany. The bones belonged to the Eurasian beaver, or Castor fiber, and the extinct giant beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri. Cut marks on the bones indicate that the animals were likely hunted for their pelts and their meat. The study also determined that most of the beaver bones came from young adults, who were likely expelled from their parents’ lodges when they had reached sexual maturity. The researchers suggest that hominins developed hunting tactics specific to these valuable semi-aquatic creatures living on their own. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports. To read about beaver furs recovered from tenth-century burials in Denmark, go to "Vikings in Furs."