article_snippet: Dr Briana Pobiner, a palaeoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, studied the meat left behind on modern lion kills to estimate whether early humans could have sustained early humans by picking the bones left behind by predators.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner found that modern predators leave large amounts of meat on modern predators kills (as shown above) and believes that prehistoric carnivores could have left even more to be  picked clean by early humans .
article_snippet: Speaking in a video on the Smithsonian website, Dr Pobiner added: 'I've found in some of the fossils I studied that early humans got to these carcasses first and were able to eat the best parts of the animals. '
article_snippet: Sometimes carnivores got some of the fossils I studied that early humans got to these carcasses first and were able to eat the best parts of the animals first and early humans probably only got scraps.
article_snippet: In research published in the Journal of Human Evolution, Dr Pobiner examined the carcasses of carnivore kills on the modern African savanna in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner looked at how much meat was consumed by lions and leopards before measuring what was left for scavengers.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner also watched how much meat other large meat eaters like hyenas and jackals left behind once they were finished with a carcass.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner claims to have found evidence that humans butchered carcasses after large predators had eaten meat from the bones first .
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner says there is also evidence within the fossil record that suggests predators had eaten carcasses before early humans arrived to butcher the animals.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner said: 'This study supports the hypothesis that passive scavenging from abandoned larger felid kills could have a been a high-yield, though potentially dangerous, strategy for early hominins even without considering within bone nutrients.'
highlights_snippet: Palaeontologists studied flesh left behind on big cat kills in modern Africa .
  
highlights_snippet: This suggests early hominins could have scavenged meat from carcasses .
  