Archeologists on the recent excavation found that Neanderthals intentionally selected the lakeside location to process the bones of at least 172 mammals including deer, horses, and aurochs (a now-extinct species of bovine). According to the study, inhabitants at the site not only broke open large mammal bones to extract the marrow, but they also ground the bones into thousands of fragments and heated them in water to extract calorie-rich bone grease. These findings place estimates of advanced resource collection thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Experts believe Neanderthals understood that there was a certain “fat quota” they had to meet in order to make the (literally) bone-crushing process worthwhile. The authors of the paper emphasized the transparent amount of herbivores that Neanderthals at Neumark-Nord must have been hunting, explaining that our “cousins” were likely able to plan ahead and use their environment effectively. This extensive research was possible because it wasn’t just one site that was preserved—it was an entire landscape, according to the authors of the study. “The enormous extent and exceptional preservation of the Neumark-Nord site complex offers us a unique opportunity to investigate how Neanderthals influenced their environment—both flora and fauna,” Fulco Scherjon, researcher on the project, said in the release. “This is extremely rare for such an ancient site—and opens exciting perspectives for future research.”