See this article: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/10/oldest-human-hair.html
Human hair found in fossilized hyena dung. Let me pull some quotes from the article.
The researchers then extracted 40 hairs from a single coprolite using fine tweezers. Although amino acid analysis detected no protein, and DNA sampling was not possible, very high magnification revealed that the size and shape of the hairs, along with their distinct cuticular scale patterns, best matched those of human hair.
...
Since the hair's chemistry was transformed by the animal's digestive process, its natural pigmentation, and whether or not it was originally wavy or straight, cannot be determined at present.
So what can we derive from this?
'First of all, the hair casts left in coprolites not only represent a very early occurrence of human hair, but they also document the fact that hominins were being consumed by hyenas,' explained Susman.
Please note that there ARE other animals whose hair/fur does resemble human hair (google for images, compare). Second note that the hair was not in the best state.
Somehow this all adds up to "ancient human eaten by hyena!"
People, please... if you want to toss out theories that is fine, let's not make them out to be fact. ARGH! This really bugs me.
Enough. I'm done until the next sensationalist article is posted.
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