THE WORLD'S OLDEST FOOD STORE
Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:31 pm
The World's Oldest Food Store
BERLIN (Reuters) - Scientists in Germany have announced the discovery of a petrified hoard of 17-million-year-old nuts they say form the oldest known cache of stored food.
"These fossilized nuts are the oldest proof we have for mammals laying in food stores," Martin Sander, a paleontologist from Bonn university, told Reuters on Tuesday. "In fact, they're the oldest store of food yet known from any animal."
His Bonn university colleague Carole Gee discovered the fossilized golden chinquapin nuts in a lignite mine near the western town of Garzweiler 10 years ago, but has only now gone public following extensive study of the findings.
"The nuts were very probably stored by a hamster or perhaps a ground squirrel," Gee said.
The chinquapin tree is no longer indigenous to Germany and is generally found on the Pacific coast of North America. At the time the nuts were hoarded, the Miocene period, crocodiles, apes and palm trees were all common to western Europe.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Scientists in Germany have announced the discovery of a petrified hoard of 17-million-year-old nuts they say form the oldest known cache of stored food.
"These fossilized nuts are the oldest proof we have for mammals laying in food stores," Martin Sander, a paleontologist from Bonn university, told Reuters on Tuesday. "In fact, they're the oldest store of food yet known from any animal."
His Bonn university colleague Carole Gee discovered the fossilized golden chinquapin nuts in a lignite mine near the western town of Garzweiler 10 years ago, but has only now gone public following extensive study of the findings.
"The nuts were very probably stored by a hamster or perhaps a ground squirrel," Gee said.
The chinquapin tree is no longer indigenous to Germany and is generally found on the Pacific coast of North America. At the time the nuts were hoarded, the Miocene period, crocodiles, apes and palm trees were all common to western Europe.
