麻豆淫院

A new study may be about to rewrite a part of our early human history. It has long been thought that Homo habilis, often considered the first true human species, was the one to turn the tables on the predator鈥損rey relationship. However, a recent analysis of previous archaeological finds suggests that they were possibly more hunted than hunters and not the dominant species we once believed them to be.

To investigate this, researchers from the University of Alcal谩 in Spain used artificial intelligence and computer vision to analyze tiny tooth marks on two H. habilis fossils. These ancient remains come from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and date back almost 2 million years.

The researchers trained the AI models on a library of 1,496 images of tooth marks made by modern carnivores, including leopards, lions, crocodiles, wolves and hyenas. Once it was trained, they presented the AI with photos of the fossil tooth marks.

As the scientists detail in their paper, in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the AI compared these marks to what it had learned and concluded, with more than 90% probability, that leopards made the tooth marks. A key reason for this was that the triangular shape of the tooth pits on the bones matched those in the leopard reference samples.

"The implications of this are major, since it shows that H. habilis was still more of a prey than a predator," wrote the researchers in their paper. "It also shows that the trophic position of some of the earliest representatives of the genus Homo was not different from those of other australopithecines."

Although the research was limited to just two individuals, the scientists contend that if H. habilis had become a powerful species that could compete with carnivores, their bones would more likely have been scavenged by bone-crushing animals, such as hyenas, after they died from other causes.

The fact that the bites were from a flesh-eating predator means the leopards were actively hunting them. This suggests that the transition to a dominant position in the food chain came later in human evolution, according to the research team.

While the findings are not conclusive on their own, the study demonstrates how AI can give us fresh and possibly deeper insights into our ancient past. Further use of this technology could not only provide new evidence about H. habilis being a prey species but also answer other questions about human evolution.

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