What animal used to be a Human predator?
The leopard is one of the chief predators of chimpanzees. There is also one hominid skull found in a cave with the puncture marks of a leopard tooth on it. “In the Plio/Pleistocene of South Africa, Australopithecus robustus was the single most common prey item for leopards (Panthera pardus) with a minimum of 88 individuals represented at the site of Swartkrans (Brain, 1981)…. The earliest reputed hominid fossil was also said to have been killed and dismembered by a carnivore (Fox, 2000). While Homo sp. seems to have been more effective in avoiding predation than Australopithecus, based on fewer remains in fossil lair sites (Brain, 1981), early Homo, nevertheless, remained on the menu. In fact, paleoanthropological material from South Africa, which has provided most of the fossil evidence for the early stages of human evolution, appears to have been primarily accumulated by large predators, particularly Pantherids and Hyaenids (Brain, 1981; Kerbis Peterhans, 1990).” “European Paleolit
