I've mentioned here at SAGG in the past my personal opinion that this was true. Now there is experimental evidence pointing to the possibility that it is true.
A new study suggests that prehistoric birds of prey made meals out of some of our earliest human ancestors.
Researchers drew this conclusion after studying more than 600 bones from modern-day monkeys. They had collected the bones from beneath the nests of African crowned eagles in the Ivory Coast's Tai rainforest. A full-grown African crowned eagle is roughly the size of an American bald eagle, which typically weighs about 10 to 12 pounds.
Punctures and scratches on many of the monkey skulls have led some researchers to rethink which animals may have preyed on our human ancestors, said W. Scott McGraw, the study's lead author and an associate professor of anthropology at Ohio State University.
?It seems that raptors have been a selective force in primate evolution for a long time,? he said. ?Before this study I thought that eagles wouldn't contribute that much to the mortality rate of primates in the forest.
Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060830005634.htm
