Apparently our ancestors had more to worry about than bears, snakes and sabre tooths:

...small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.

Apparently the Taung Baby was snatched and killed by an eagle.

I hate when that happens.

> Apparently the Taung Baby was snatched and killed by an eagle.

Maybe. Almost any animal that dies in the forest will be eaten by raptors, if they get the chance. Large eagles tend to be scavengers more often than hunters, so talon and beak marks around the eye socket don't automatically prove the cause of death.

I have a photograph of a Berkut eagle taking a deer in the British Isles. She didn't carry the deer off, but she certainly killed it. She was also an expert fox killer, and her previous handler had taken wolves with her, though I have not photographs of that. I would suggest to the researchers they attend a hunt with some falconers who use eagles, and directly observe what the birds are capable of.
Also, ravens and raptors are known to hunt cooperatively with wolves and coyotes; that could also have been the case in the cited example.