Paranthropus boisei, Nutcracker Man
The most extreme chewing machine any hominin produced — and it probably ate grass.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 960 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 60 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Paranthropus boisei has molars four times the area of a modern human's, cheekbones flared far forward, and a sagittal crest for enormous jaw muscles. Louis Leakey nicknamed the 1959 Olduvai skull Nutcracker Man on the assumption it cracked nuts. Carbon isotopes and dental microwear later contradicted that: its diet was dominated by C4 plants, most likely grasses and sedges, and the wear is not that of hard-object feeding. It is a hominin that solved the savanna by eating what the antelope ate.