Through a process of elimination, the researchers began to suspect a shark. It wasn't clear to them how, or why, another human would have caused such extreme injuries, or how commonly reported local animal attacks could have produced them. Deep serrated cuts of varying sizes and shapes covered his bones, a hand had been sheared off, and a leg was missing. It had been excavated around 1920 from the Tsukumo cemetery site in Okayama, Japan, near Japan's Seto Inland Sea.Īt first, the researchers were baffled by the man's inordinate injuries. At Kyoto University, the pair came upon a skeleton dubbed No. Alyssa White and professor Rick Schulting of Oxford first encountered the shark victim as part of a larger project investigating violent trauma in the skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers of the Japanese archipelago. He is estimated to have stood just over 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. Radiocarbon dating places the man between 13 BCE during the fisher-hunter-gatherer Jōmon era in prehistoric Japan, a time when shark hunting likely occurred. The assault predates 5th century Greek writings and 8th century BC illustrations of shark attacks, as well as known archaeological cases. The research team calls the unfortunate man the world's oldest shark attack victim on record. This would have resulted in a relatively quick death from hypovolemic shock." "Although numerous blood vessels and organs would have been impacted, it is likely that at least his larger lower limb arteries would have been severed early in the attack. "He most likely lost his right leg and left hand in the attack, and his wounds would have been fatal as they totaled at least 790 tooth marks that reached to the bone," the Oxford-led researchers say in a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. After methodically studying his multiple violent injuries, they say a shark is to blame, and they've reconstructed the attack in stunning detail. Scientists have solved the mystery of a prehistoric man's grisly death.
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