The bones of nine Neanderthals have been found in a previously unexplored part of Guattari Cave, Central Italy, along with the remains of many long-gone animal inhabitants of the area. However, the find undermines the view of our nearest relatives as the apex predator of their ecosystem. Instead, the bones were gnawed on by hyenas that are thought to have dragged them into the cave.
Guattari Cave in Mount Circeo has been a rich source of information on Pleistocene Europe since the discovery of Neanderthal and animal bones there in 1939. Eight years later, however, it was reasonable to think we’d learned everything the cave system had to teach us about human occupation of Europe. However, in 2019 scientists began exploring a part of the cave that had been blocked off in a landslide.