A new research on Neanderthals, an extinct human species in the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens, revealed that they hunted and ate wild pigeons long before modern humans started consuming bird meat.
Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and Middle East for up to 300,000 years but vanished from the fossil record about 30-40,000 years ago.

Leftovers of Neanderthal feasts were discovered in sediments that built up over millennia in the huge Gorham's Cave on the east face of Gibraltar, where generations of Neanderthals sheltered for nearly 100,000 years.

According to scientists, Neanderthals were catching, butchering and roasting pigeons as much as 67,000 years ago. An analysis of 1,724 dove-bones was published in the Scientific Reports journal .These bones found in a cave in Gibraltar, reveal tooth marks, cuts and evidence of roasting.

Workers at the site unearthed a haul of pigeon bones and found that some bore tooth marks, cuts from stone tools or signs of burns. These examinations conclude that they were created when the meat was left to cook on the glowing embers of a fire.

The evidence also suggested that Neanderthals ate much like a latter-day Homo sapiens would tuck into a roast chicken, pulling the bones apart to get at the soft flesh.

"They liked what we like and went for the breasts, the drumsticks and the wings," study author Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, told Phys.org.

It was not known how the birds were captured. However, the speculations prove that they would have been relatively easy to snatch from their nests by a moderately skillful and silent climber.

The majority of bird bones at Gorham's Cave belong to rock doves, the wild ancestors of modern feral pigeons. g sediments ranging from 67,000 to 28,000 years old.