Researchers Find 1.8 Million-Year-Old Elephant Butchery Site in Tanzania

2 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 14

Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania has yielded what researchers call the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery, with stone tools found alongside 1.8 million-year-old elephant bones.
The remains belonged to Elephas recki, an extinct elephant species, and the study says cut-mark patterns point to deliberate, systematic processing by early human ancestors rather than opportunistic scavenging.
Researchers argue exploiting such large carcasses could have produced substantial food surpluses, giving hominin groups a survival advantage and supporting broader changes in subsistence and social organization.
Published in eLife, the findings push evidence of large-animal processing deep into the early Pleistocene and add to Olduvai Gorge's long record of major early human fossil and tool discoveries.