The teenager probably didn’t see it coming. One moment, they were carrying on with life as usual in South Africa circa 1.8 million years ago. The next, blinding pain, a crunch, and then darkness — dead at the paws of one of prehistory’s greatest carnivores.
We know the story because of a single fossil, uncovered and collected by Robert Broom and J.T. Robinson at a fossil-filled cave called Swartkrans. The specimen, SK-54, is nothing more than a skull roof from an early human Paranthropus — an evolutionary cousin who was characterized by deep jaws and broad teeth. What makes the fossil special, and horrific, are two punctures in the skull.
The holes line up with the conical lower canines of a leopard. The longer upper canines of the cat’s maw likely stabbed through the hominin’s forehead or eyes — perhaps as the leopard carried its dinner to the recesses of the cave.
