- BERLIN (Reuters) - Scientists
in Germany have announced the discovery of a petrified hoard of 17-million-year-old
nuts they say form the oldest known cache of stored food.
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- "These fossilized nuts are the oldest proof we have
for mammals laying in food stores," Martin Sander, a paleontologist
from Bonn university, told Reuters on Tuesday. "In fact, they're the
oldest store of food yet known from any animal."
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- His Bonn university colleague Carole Gee discovered the
fossilized golden chinquapin nuts in a lignite mine near the western town
of Garzweiler 10 years ago, but has only now gone public following extensive
study of the findings.
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- "The nuts were very probably stored by a hamster
or perhaps a ground squirrel," Gee said.
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- The chinquapin tree is no longer indigenous to Germany
and is generally found on the Pacific coast of North America. At the time
the nuts were hoarded, the Miocene period, crocodiles, apes and palm trees
were all common to western Europe.
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