article_snippet: Early humans are widely regarded as having been voracious hunters whose appetite for meat contributed to the extinction of many of the large mammals that once roamed the planet.
article_snippet: However, new research by paleontologists has suggested that our human ancestors may have started out as scavengers rather than the efficient killing machines our human ancestors are often portrayed as.
article_snippet: The findings could help to explain how early humans made the significant shift in humans diet to consume meat and became one of the top predators on the planet.
article_snippet: Briana Pobiner told Mail Online: 'Early humans would have scavenged carcasses of animals that ranged in size from medium sized animals like wildebeest all the way up to huge extinct elephants, and animals that lived in a range of different habitats from more open grasslands to closed woodlands. '
article_snippet: Briana Pobiner added that early humans probably survived though a combination of both hunting and scavenging.
article_snippet: probably a combination of scavenging from larger animals and hunting smaller animals. '
article_snippet: One major energetic advantage of scavenging is that you have a really high success rate in the sense that unless a carcass is absolutely picked clean, like what happens after vultures have gotten to a carcass, you’re virtually guaranteed to get some meat and marrow from what’s left. '
article_snippet: With hunting, you can expend a lot of energy and come up empty-handed.'
article_snippet: The evolution in meat eating has been linked to an increase in brain size, The evolution in meat eating been linked to an increase in home range size and maybe the expansion out of Africa. '
article_snippet: Competing with big carnivores you needed sophisticated interaction, communication and other social skills that are another hallmark of being human.'
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner said Dr Pobiner findings had helped to dispell the idea that early humans would have struggled to find enough meat to survive by scavenging the meat left by larger predators.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner said: 'We tend to think of scavenging as second-rate to hunting, somehow a lesser form of acquiring resources from animal carcasses, that scavengers are lower on the hierarchy and only left with piddly scraps. '
article_snippet: This stems from the earliest interpretations, dating back to 1925, of ancient humans as carnivorous, predatory killers based on associated broken animal fossils construed as being used as weapons.
article_snippet: Dr Pobiner believes, however, that more research is needed to understand whether  scavenging provided a dietary stepping stone as our ancestors moved towards eating more meat.
highlights_snippet: Researchers say This could have been a key step towards becoming hunters .