By Bruce Bower
Nutcracker Man, a member of the human evolutionary family best known for having massive jaws, peglike teeth and huge chewing muscles, was just an old softy. Although most researchers have assumed that this now-extinct ancestor evolved to eat nuts, seeds and other hard or fibrous foods, it actually favored tender vittles such as nutrient-rich fruits, a new study finds.
Belonging to the species Paranthropus boisei, Nutcracker Man lived from 2.3 million to 1.2 million years ago in East Africa. It represented the final species in a side-branch of human evolution.
No other member of the human evolutionary family evolved choppers that measured up to those of P. boisei. But the first analysis of microscopic marks on fossil teeth shows that this species concentrated on eating soft foods, despite its outsized chewing apparatus, say anthropologist Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and his colleagues.