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In a new study, Field Museum researchers collaborated with scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on an in-depth analysis of hairs carefully extracted from the lions' broken teeth. The study used microscopy and genomics to identify some of the species the lions consumed. The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.

The original discovery of the hairs occurred in the early 1990s, when Thomas Gnoske, a collections manager at the Field Museum, found the lions' skulls in storage and examined them for signs of what they had consumed.

He was the first to determine that they were fully grown older adult males—despite being maneless. He also was the first to notice that thousands of broken and compacted hairs had accumulated in exposed cavities in the lions' damaged teeth during their lifetimes.

In 2001, Gnoske and Julian Kerbis Peterhans, a professor at Roosevelt University and Field Museum adjunct curator, first reported on the damaged condition of the teeth—which they hypothesized may have contributed to the lions' predation of humans—and the presence of hairs embedded in broken and partially healed teeth. A preliminary analysis of some of the hairs suggested that they were from eland, impala, oryx, porcupine, warthog and zebra.

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