The Deadliest Man Eaters In Mankind’s Evolutionary History
Humans are the most successful predator on the planet and stand sentinel at the spearhead of the planetary food chain, but this was not an achievement that came easy. Mankind’s ancestors had to fight and overcome some of the fiercest creatures imaginable to take the crown as the apex predator, but who exactly were these predators that have trimmed human population sizes since the dawn of time?

Throughout mankind’s evolutionary path arguably the most common cause of death, was being eaten alive, beginning with the first primates who evolved about 65 million years ago when man’s ancestors were about the size of a monkey. Larger primates, gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos, representing modern man’s ancestors, evolved about 13 million years ago and about seven million years ago, hominids, including man’s direct ancestors, split from chimps and bonobos, so Homo sapiens, are about 200,000 years old.
According to a June 20, 2011 article in Smithsonian Magazine, by Rob Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University: “Evidence of our historic fates (with predators) comes from knowing what eats monkeys or apes today, and from studying what ate now-extinct species.” For example, many of the best preserved fossils of hominids come from piles of bones at sites where predators devoured them and this informs scientists of the types of creatures who most often snacked on slow hunters. Here then, are the life forms that most often fed on man’s ancient ancestors.
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