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upstart writes:

Our extinct sister species was hunting and butchering big game, according to new research:

Historical finds of elephant remains alongside stone tools have long prompted speculation among researchers that early humans or other hominin species may have relied on the massive mammals for food.

Now, a team of researchers has determined that Neanderthals in Europe were taking down elephants and methodically butchering them, yielding food stores that would have lasted Neanderthal groups months. Their research is published today in Science Advances.

The bones belonged to straight-tusked elephants, (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species about twice the size of African elephants, the largest living land mammals on Earth. Evidence that Neanderthals were hunting the animals in pit traps was discovered in the early 1920s, and in 1948, a specimen was found near 25 flint artifacts and a wooden lance.

[...] "Neanderthals knew what they were doing," wrote Britt Starkovich, an archaeologist at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment and the University of Tübingen, in an associated Focus article. "They knew which kinds of individuals to hunt, where to find them, and how to execute the attack. Critically, they knew what to expect with a massive butchery effort and an even larger meat return."

Journal Reference:
Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Lutz Kindler, Katharine MacDonald, and Wil Roebroeks, Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants 125.000 years ago: Implications for Neanderthal behavior [open], Sci Adv, 9, 2023. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add8186)

Original Submission