This is

This is Scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.

Got a minute?

When it comes to Neanderthal diets, the consensus has been,

they eat meat, lots of meat.

But now it looks like Neanderthal's chals jumped on a fair amount of veggies too.

Researchers have had a tough time discerning the Neanderthals diet.

They evaluated carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bones,

but those only correspond to some general kinds of proteins.

Even plant remains in Neanderthal teeth could have gotten there because a tasty animal carcass itself

contained traces of a last vegetarian meal. So the researchers relied on foolproof evidence. They studied Neanderthal

fecal remains from a site in southern Spain called El Salt. The Andathals made at their home

about 50,000 years ago. The researchers analyzed the samples for chemical compounds that can only

result from metabolizing cholesterol from meat or from metabolizing plants.

All five samples showed evidence of meat consumption, but two revealed the

digestion of plants, meaning that Neanderthals did try vegetation, likely tubers and nuts,

the studies in the journal Plus One.

Scientists intend to use the same technique to examine soil samples at a 1.8 million-year-old site in Tanzania in the hopes that any

remaining poop may deliver an ancestral diet scoop.

Thanks for the minute.

For Scientific American 60 Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber.