著名的古人猿"汤恩小孩"究竟是被什么动物所杀？日前，科学家终于找到了答案，并称人类的祖先曾经是鸟类的target='_blank'>食物。

据路透社1月13日报道，科学家12日宣布，已有充分的证据显示"汤恩小孩"葬身于老鹰之口而非先前推测的美洲豹等动物。1924，target=_blank>南非汤恩地区发现的一具大约3岁至4岁的非洲南方古人猿头骨target=_blank>化石被称作"汤恩小孩"。科学家认为，"汤恩小孩"有200target=_blank>万年历史，它混合了猿和人的特征。科学家将其称为"南方古猿非洲种"或是"target='_blank'>南非人猿"，认为它是有关人类进化的最戏剧性的发现。

来自南非约翰内斯堡的威特沃特斯兰德大学古人类学家伯杰博士分析说，老鹰很可能将"汤恩小孩"叼到鹰巢中为食，并啄出其眼睛吃掉；最后，"汤恩小孩"的头骨从鹰巢中掉出，200万年后才被人发现。

40多年来，科学家一直怀疑"汤恩小孩"是被美洲虎或豹等动物所杀。但10年前，伯杰博士和他的同事提出--"汤恩小孩"是被一种猛禽所杀，但当时这种论断也仅为一种推测而已。直到后来，当伯杰重新阅读了一份由美国俄亥俄州大学研究人员提供的有关被一种名为非洲猛雕的老鹰捕杀的灵长类动物的材料后，"汤恩小孩"的死因才终于有了新的科学解释。

科学家们发现，从遗留在被非洲猛雕捕食的动物遗骨上的痕迹判断，杀死"汤恩小孩"的凶手是鸟类而不是虎豹等动物。伯杰指出："老鹰在捕食猴子时，用锋利的爪子和喙将猴子眼睛啄出，并在眼眶上留下了痕迹。这个重要线索将'汤恩小孩'的死与老鹰联系起来，但以前我们没有注意到。"当伯杰重新研究了"汤恩小孩"的头骨后指出："在它的眼眶部位，我发现了那些被啄破的痕迹，包括我在内的数千名科学家对这些痕迹做了研究，认为它是老鹰留下的。"

伯杰指出："鸟类以人类为食的历史也促进了人类的进化发展，如直立行走和群居。地面上直立行走的人在猛禽眼中变成更小的目标，有效地防止了猛禽的袭击；而人类群居也更有能力抵抗空中猛禽的攻击。"伯杰还表示："有关'汤恩小孩'的新发现表明，永远不能停止对事物的研究，因为即使被研究了好几年的东西也可能让你有新的发现。"

（国际在线独家资讯 蒋黎黎）

本稿件为国际在线专稿，媒体转载请注明稿件来源和译者姓名。

The answer to a scientific "who-done-it?" has revealed a chilling fact: We used to be bird food.

Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the "Taung child", a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle.

"Birds used to eat us and in doing so they shaped our behaviour," said Dr Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.

"Birds of prey are one of the few things that some modern primates have special calls or alarms for," he told Reuters.

Berger said the child had probably been scooped up by an eagle and taken to its nest, where its eyes were ripped out for dinner. The child's skull eventually fell out of the nest, only to be found almost 2 million years later.

Placing us on the eagle's menu may also explain other aspects of human evolution, from walking upright, which could present a smaller target to an aerial attacker, to our tendency to live in groups.

"These birds would have been after the most vulnerable members of the group," Berger said, a scenario which may have triggered collective measures of protection.

This murder most foul occurred 2 million years ago but the culprit, an African crowned eagle -- also known as the crowned hawk-eagle -- still circles the skies and large eagles still prey on small primates in Africa. 　

Unearthed in South Africa in 1924, the Taung child shook the scientific world when Raymond Dart suggested in 1925 that it was a higher form of primate which he dubbed Australopithecus africanus, or "man-ape of southern Africa."

Few in the scientific establishment were willing to accept then what has since become conventional wisdom: that humanity evolved in Africa.

For decades it was believed that the famous Taung child had been slain by a leopard or a sabre-toothed cat.

But 10 years ago Berger and a colleague suggested that the child, who was about 3 or 4 years old when it died, was killed by a large bird of prey.

This remained an educated guess until researchers at Ohio State University submitted a paper on primate remains from African crowned eagle kills which Berger was asked to review.

The scientists found several key features of bone damage which distinguished birds of prey kills from those of big cats.

"These critical clues were puncture marks in the base of the eye sockets of primates, made when the eagles ripped the eyes out of the dead monkeys with their sharp talons and beaks.

It was a marker that others hadn't noted before, that linked eagles definitively to the kill," Berger said.

Intrigued, Berger re-examined the Taung child skull, which is perhaps the most analysed hominid fossil in the world.

"I almost dropped down when I looked into the eyes of the skull as I saw the marks... they were perfect examples of eagle damage. Thousands of scientists, including myself, had overlooked this critical damage," Berger said.

"It just shows that you can never stop looking. Just because something has been studied for years doesn't mean that it can't still tell us new things," Berger said.