article_snippet: Lions, like the two eating a zebra kill above, leave large amounts of Lions kills untouched, meaning there would have been plenty of meat for early humans to scavenge from carcasses left by prehistoric feline predators .
article_snippet: This may have been very much like past carnivore communities during the time our ancestors were starting to eat meat from larger animals, when our have evidence that felids — ancient lions, leopards, and three species of sabertoothed cats — lived alongside our ancestors and may have been the dominant kinds of carnivores at this time.'
article_snippet: Hyenas are the main scavengers of lion kills on the African Savannah but there are few examples of Hyenas in the fossil record in areas where  early humans have been discovered and Hyenas could have scavenged instead .
article_snippet: She said that at around the time Homo erectus were alive there were also few species of bone-crunching carnivores like hyenas in Africa.
article_snippet: She said: 'This lack of bone-crunching hyenids would have meant that as early Homo individuals began incorporating more carcass foods into early Homo individuals diets early Homo individuals would have had more access to within-bone resources than is available in many present-day African savanna ecosystems.'
article_snippet: She added that sabretooth cats that lived at the time would have been less efficient than modern predatory cats at removing flesh from a carcass.
article_snippet: She said: 'The fossil record of modern lions and leopards goes back to about 2 million years, modern lions and leopards dietary adaptations would probably have been similar to the living species today. '
article_snippet: Where the difference comes in is with the three species (three genera, actually) of sabertoothed cats that were around when hominins first started eating meat. '
article_snippet: the three species (three genera, actually) of sabertoothed cats that were around when hominins first started eating meat would have likely left even more meat on carcasses, because the three species (three genera, actually) of sabertoothed cats that were around when hominins first started eating meat teeth are even more adapted to slicing flesh.'
highlights_snippet: Large bone crunching animals like hyenas were not common at that time .
  