Over the past century, we have learned a lot about our Neanderthal cousins, but there are still many unanswered questions. We know Neanderthals were good hunters, but we don't know how much they supplemented their diet with plants.
Some Neanderthals are thought to have been omnivores, consuming a variety of plants and mushrooms, and researchers think they may have been.
Neanderthals in other places may have eaten a lot of meat, including deer, mammoth, and wooly rhinoceros.
In order to clarify the question of Neanderthal carnivory, an international team of researchers used new analytical methods to examine the teeth of a Neanderthal from the Middle Paleolithic.
If you want to figure out an extinct animal's position in the food web, you need to extract and analyze the nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 from bone.
It's best to work on specimen that have died within the past 50,000 years because this technique has limits. If the animal was fattened on a plant diet that had more nitrogen-15 than expected, it could be deceptive.
It wouldn't work on the Gabasa tooth, so researchers tested zinc levels in the teeth.
The method takes advantage of changes in the concentration of zinc in enamel with each step in a food chain, a feature demonstrated in modern remains and a few ancient animal bones. It's the first time zinc has been used to assess the diet of a Neanderthal.
Led by Klervia Jaouen from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the researchers analyzed the Neanderthal molar and bones from other animal species.
The researchers say that lower proportions of zinc-66 in an animal's bones correspond to a higher likelihood of being a carnivore.
Jaouen and her colleagues think it came from a meat eater.
They write that the signature suggests that it is a top-level carnivore. The Neanderthal has the lowest zinc isotope ratio of all the animal groups studied.
There is evidence to suggest that the diet of this Neanderthal was different than that of other animals.
The bones and blood of their prey are likely to have been eaten by many contemporary carnivores in this area.
Jaouen and her colleagues think the Neanderthal ate a lot of animal meat but not the blood or bones.
The researchers say that chemical evidence shows that this Neanderthal died in the same area where they were born.
There is more research that needs to be done to understand the full range of Neanderthal diet.
It is possible that some Neanderthal populations supplemented their diet with plants and fungi more than others.
It could soon help resolve the question of whether or not Neanderthals are omnivores by using this type of zinc isotope analysis.
The Payre site in France's Rhone Valley is one of the places Jaouen and her colleagues hope to perform analyses on.
The study was published in a peer reviewed journal.
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