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Big bird named as child's killer ... three million years later
Jonathan Clayton, Johannesburg
January 14, 2006

THE African crowned eagle has been fingered for the murder two to three million years ago of arguably the most important human ancestor found.

The mystery of how the Taung child, Africa's first hominid discovery, met its end at age 3 1/2 has puzzled scientists for decades and could throw important new light on the theory of human evolution.

"This is the end of an 80-year-old murder mystery ... We have proved conclusively ... that the African crowned eagle was the killer," said Lee Berger, a US paleontologist.

The end of the mystery "gives us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors", he said.

"It shows it was not only big cats, but also these creatures from the air - aerial bombardment if you will - that our ancestors had to be afraid of.

"These were the stressors ... that grew and shaped the human mind and formed our behaviour today."

The discovery in 1924 of the fossilised half-ape, half-man skull about 480km northwest of Johannesburg overturned the prevailing view that humans originated in Eurasia and focused the search for the "cradle of humanity" on Africa.

Announcing his verdict this week, Professor Berger, from Wits University in Johannesburg, said new evidence showed that the child was not killed by leopards or sabre-toothed cats, the previous suspects.

"This child was killed by a single blow of a 14cm-long talon into the brain," he told a press conference.

"It was later disembowelled. The eagle would have used its beak to eat out the eyes and the brain - some of the most nutritious parts - and created these marks."

The Taung child was discovered by British professor Raymond Dart.

He published a paper in Nature saying that the child - a specimen of the human ancestor species Australopithecus africanus - was the famed "missing link" between man and ape.

The bold claim was widely dismissed at the time, but subsequently other, older hominids - such as Lucy, believed to be more than three million years old - were found in the Great Rift Valley that snakes from South Africa through Kenya and Tanzania to Ethiopia.

Professor Berger and Ron Clarke, a fellow paleontologist, first mooted the theory 10 years ago that the killer was a predatory bird similar to today's African crowned eagle.

"We had one little flap of bone on the top of the skull that looked like some of the damage we see made by eagles and nothing else," Professor Berger said. "It was the ultimate two-million-year-old cold case."
The Times

I think this is a crowned eagle juvenile...

I see on the forum that there is a beautiful pale form of Wahlberg's Eagle which was misidentified as a juvenile Crowned Eagle.

Take note of the bird's small bill and the talons with smaller toenails. Juv Crowned has got a much heavier bill and massive nails, as well as blackish specks on the leg feathers. The photo's are a bit small and one can't see the tail pattern and eye colour perfectly. Juv Crowned has got distinct dark barring on the tail and light-coloured eyes. It does look on the picture if this bird has got dark eyes.

Sasol does not help much with the juv Crowned, it only shows the bird from the back and the sketch is a bit small...