To start, the trio butchered a sheep carcass with sharp stone flakes and found that the cutmarks indeed resembled those found on two
different Australopithecine fossil arm bones — one dating to 4.2 million years ago and the other to 3.4 million years ago — as well as 2.5 - million - year - old animal bones discovered near the known stone tools in the Olduvai Gorge.
Thus, in an attempt to provide a synthetic picture of stature among
australopithecines and early Homo, and to ensure that the results are comparable, we relied on a limited number of
different datasets.