# Two Million Year Old Murder



## Rosemary (Jan 14, 2006)

*Two Million Year Old Murder Mystery Solved.*

   A palaeontologist in South  America revealed that the continent’s first hominid discovery was killed by a large bird of prey, thereby solving a two million—year-old murder mystery.
   The discovery of small marks within the skull of the Taung Child, found in 1924, showed beyond doubt that the small ape-like child was killed by a bird, probably a crowned Eagle.
   The idea of a decade ago that early man, called Australopithecus Africanus, living in southern Africa about two million years ago, were killed by predators other than big cats.
   The eagle-death theory was widely accepted but while reviewing a scientific paper four months ago on damage inflicted on monkey skulls when being killed by eagles, new clues were found.  The damage was the same as those on the skull of the Taung Child.


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## Cyril (Jan 17, 2006)

I'm always facinating by these reconstitutions of past events based on fossils. It reminds me a tv program I saw last week about paleontologists who explained a dinosaur hunting according to a succession of traces found on a rock.


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## Esioul (Jan 17, 2006)

It sort of demonstrates how chancy and generally difficult life was then- these hominids were really living as insecure a life as a monkey.


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