Vulture Culture

Human artifacts turn up in ancient scavengers' nests

- -Elizabeth Anne Brown

A grass shoe more than 600 years old

IT TURNS OUT the bearded vulture-also called the quebrantahuesos, or bonebreaker-isn't just a carrion scavenger. It's also a keen collector of human ephemera.

This habit has given researchers in southern Spain a unique boon: "time capsules" of human activity that stretch back more than 600 years in the vultures' remote cliffside nesting caves. The raptors often reuse sites for generations.