When early humans first arrived in modern-day Spain, about a million and a half years ago, they immediately faced a quandary: what to eat?
Scientists have long suspected that they borrowed from the still-fresh kills of saber-tooth cats, which would have only eaten a portion of their meal. In doing so, Homo erectus, or perhaps another early hominin, would have faced competition from the bone-crushing giant hyena, a long-extinct scavenger that would have weighed more than 200 pounds.
