Neanderthals ate their veggies

Neanderthals weren't justmeat-eaters, withnew research findingthat theancient near-human creaturesregularly cooked and consumed a variety of plants.

The discovery challenges the position ofsomewho argue that Neanderthals were largely carnivores who ultimately became extinct, in part because they were bested byearly human ancestors who managed to wring more nutrition from their environment by incorporating more plants into their diet.

Researchers examined the dental calculus the layer of hardenedplaque in seven fossilized teeth of Neanderthal individuals whose remains were unearthed at archeological sites in Iraq and Belgium.

What they found wasa wealth of well-preserved plant microfossils.

Theyidentified dozens ofstarch grains from many plants, including wild grass, legumes, palm dates, roots and tubers.

Neanderthal cooking

They also found evidence that some of the plants had been cooked.

"There is clear evidence of cooking in the recovered starch grains, and furthermore, several of the identified plant foods would have required moderate to high levels of preparation," the researchers wrote in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These lines of evidence indicate Neanderthals were investing their time and labour in preparing plant foods in ways that increased their edibility and nutritional quality."

The authors note that there is no evidence Neanderthals used tools to grind plant parts, which suggests they weren't practising agriculture.

But theysay their research shows that Neanderthals were nevertheless "capable of complex food-gathering behaviours" that included hunting and the harvesting and processing of plants for food.