carcass 復習

オマキザルは石と石をぶつけることで、人間の祖先が使用していた石器のような石を作り出すようです。

Monkeys make stone flakes like early tools

Call them knockoffs. Rock-smashing monkeys in Brazil make stone flakes that look a lot like tools made by our ancient ancestors.

Scientists watched as capuchin monkeys in a national park pounded stones against each other, splitting off sharp-edged flakes that resemble cutting tools used by the forerunners of humans.

The monkeys ignored the flakes, focusing on the damaged stones instead. So they clearly weren’t deliberately making them as tools. But if ancient monkeys did the same thing, their unintentional handiwork could be mistaken for deliberate tool-making by human ancestors, researchers said.

The scientists are not suggesting that any stone tools attributed so far to human forerunners were instead made by monkeys, said Tomos Proffitt of Oxford University in England. Those tools, which date back as far as 3.3 million years ago, are more complex than what the Brazilian monkeys make, he said in a telephone interview.

But as scientists look for earlier and earlier tools, their findings may begin to resemble the monkey flakes more strongly, said Proffitt, lead author of a study released on Oct. 19 by the journal Nature. And the new work shows that such flakes are not exclusively the calling card of our ancient ancestors, called hominins, he said.

中略

Our African ancestors used sharp-edged stone flakes for butchering and skinning animal carcasses, as well as cutting up tough plant material. To show such flakes were human-made tools, scientists seek evidence like wear marks on the edges or nearby animal bones with marks from butchering.

以下省略

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003300814

今回取り上げる表現はcarcassです。『ライトハウス英和辞典』（第5版　研究社）には「（英）carcase 1（獣の）死体（特に食肉用に畜殺されたもの）、（料理した鳥の）骨、がら　2（軽蔑的またはこっけいに）（人の）（死）体」とありました。Cambridge Free English Dictionary には “the body of a dead animal, especially a large one that is soon to be cut up as meat or eaten by wild animals” と定義されており、特に大きい動物の死体をさすようです。
今回は1つ目の「獣の死体」の意味で用いられており、 記事内の “butchering and skinning animal carcasses” から、動物を殺して皮を剥ぎ取る様子がうかがえます。

この表現は過去にも取り上げられておりました。（aqua）
carcass - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から
carcass - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から