Neanderthals ate barbecued pigeon

Neanderthals are known to have eaten seals, dolphins, plants, and now scientists have added another dish to their menu - barbecued pigeon.
Neanderthals ate pigeons that they had toasted on open fires, scientists say.
Leftovers of Neanderthal feasts have been discovered in sediments that built up over millennia in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar.
Workers at the site have discovered a haul of pigeon bones and found that some bore tooth marks, cuts from stone tools or signs of charring, perhaps created when the meat was left to cook on the glowing embers of a fire.
Most of the marks were on pigeon wing and leg bones where much of the meat was to be had. Some of the thicker bones had tiny puncture marks from smaller, needle-like bones, which can happen when chicken wings are twisted apart to get at the meat, 'The Guardian' reported.

The majority of bird bones at Gorham's Cave belong to rock doves, the wild ancestors of modern feral pigeons.

Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, who took part in the latest study, looked at 1,724 rock dove bones found in sediments ranging from 67,000 to 28,000 years old.
Close examination of the bones found cut marks on 28 pigeon bones and tooth marks on 15 that dated from Neanderthal times. Other bones had burn marks.
Burn marks left some of the bones unevenly discoloured, which may have happened when wing or leg bones were cooked.
The researchers said the oldest bones they studied could not have been damaged by modern humans.

"There is absolutely no doubt that this was the Neanderthals. And they could not have learned this from modern humans because there weren't any modern humans in Europe 67,000 years ago. They must have come up with this on their own," Finlayson said.
The study appears in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.