For both dietary and environmental reasons, we’re rethinking our consumption of meat . But for earlier humans, meat consumption appeared to be a critical, yet somewhat poorly understood, contributor to evolution—and a new study offers some novel insights into how nuanced this actually was. Published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the findings describe how fossil evidence from animal bones and hominin remains strongly suggest that the earliest members of the genus Homo used a varied yet consistent pattern of carcass use to consume meat. According to study lead author Francis Forrest , researchers consider meat-eating to be a major evolutionary turning point. However, how early humans accessed meat was unclear. Were they scavenging leftovers or engaging in more active forms of hunting and scavenging? The latest findings indicate it was a mix of both, Forrest, a biological anthropologist at Fairfield University, told Gizmodo.…