The analysis of a fossilized tooth from Spain suggests that some members of Neanderthals rarely ate their veggies, if at all.
But there are some details that scientists still struggle to understand and one of them is the Neanderthal diet.developed a new method for determining the diet of Neanderthals — a chemical analysis of their tooth enamel. According to the authors, the method can be applied to single individuals from various time periods and locations and has already shown that one Neanderthal from the Iberian Peninsula consumed a strictly carnivorous diet.
To advance our knowledge around this ancient diet and its potential variations, the researchers devised a new technique to understand what the Neanderthals actually ate. Based off of existing methods that determine the diets of modern species, the new technique assesses the chemical composition of an individual Neanderthal’s tooth enamel to determine whether or not that individual was a carnivore.
Using these compositional thresholds to determine an animal’s diet works well with some samples of bone, but it doesn’t always bear fruit when bones are older. That's because nitrogen isotopes are susceptible to decay, making this sort of dietary analysis nearly impossible for samples over 50,000 years old — a contingent which includes the vast majority of Neanderthal specimens.
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