World’s Oldest Food Store Discovered

Scientists in Germany have discovered a petrified hoard of nuts they say are 17 million years old, thus making them the oldest known cache of stored food. "These fossilized nuts are the oldest proof we have for mammals laying in food stores," Martin Sander, a paleontologist from Bonn University told Reuters. "In fact they’re the oldest store of food yet known from any animal." Sander’s colleague, Carole Gee, discovered the fossilized nuts in a lignite mine near the western town of Garzweiler 10 years ago, but has only now gone public with the findings. She said they were probably stored by a squirrel or hamster. The nuts come from the chinquapin tree, which is no longer found in Germany. At the time the nuts were stored away during the Miocene period, chinquapin trees as well as palm trees, crocodiles and apes were all common to western Europe.