Hominin Meat Consumption (HoMeCo)  

Group leader: Dr. Tina Lüdecke

Dietary adaptations, particularly the consumption of animal products, are considered key developments in human evolution. However, when and to what extent early hominins began consuming meat remains debated. In the HoMeCo Project (Hominin Meat Consumption), geochemist Dr. Tina Lüdecke and her team investigate the evolution of early hominin diets using a novel method they developed to analyze nitrogen isotopes in fossil tooth enamel.

In 2025, the team published the first direct isotopic evidence of the trophic position of Australopithecus from Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa, revealing a predominantly plant-based diet over 3 million years ago, without evidence for regular meat consumption. Building on this discovery, the Emmy Noether Research Group investigates fossil hominins and associated animal communities from multiple sites across eastern and southern Africa, spanning several million years of human evolution. By combining nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, zinc and calcium isotope analyses, and expanding their research to include amino acid analyses, the team reconstructs ancient food webs, dietary diversity, and environmental conditions to better understand how our ancestors adapted to changing environments and when animal-derived foods became important in human evolution.