Cut marks on Dikika bones (c. 3.4 Ma)
Marcas de corte en huesos de Dikika (c. 3,4 Ma)
- Date
- c. 3.4 Ma · confidence medium
- Place
- Dikika, Afar, Ethiopia
- Credited to
- Australopithecus afarensis (proposed attribution)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Two bones from a bovid and another herbivore bear striations attributed to stone tools, almost 800,000 years older than the earliest Oldowan tools. If correct, australopiths were already processing meat.
McPherron and colleagues (Nature, 2010) read them as cut and percussion marks; Domínguez-Rodrigo and others (2012) argue they may result from trampling in abrasive sediment. No associated stone tools were found.
What it led to
- debate over the origin of meat-eating and tool use before Homo
- re-evaluation of how to tell cut marks from trampling marks
- pushing back the chronology of stone technology