The shrew pleads ‘not guilty’ to the mole’s murder: comment on Bennàsar et al. (2015)

AbstractThe damage on the surface of a mole fossil humerus from the early Pleistocene site of Sima del Elefante (Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain) has been recently interpreted as bite marks of the extinct shrew Beremendia fissidens. The present work considers this attribution not evident, and it stresses some doubts on the feasibility of a shrew leaving bite marks on a bone using its incisors, as well as the physical and ethological inconsistencies that it would imply.