The late Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain), dated to ~1.4
Ma, provides evidence on the subsistence strategies of the first hominin population that dispersed in Western Europe. The
site preserves Oldowan tool assemblages associated with abundant remains of large mammals. A small proportion of these
remains show cut marks and percussion marks resulting from defleshing and bone fracturing, and a small proportion of bones
also show tooth marks. Previous taphonomic studies of FN3 suggested that the hominins had secondary access to the prey
leftovers abandoned by sabretooth cats and other primary predators. However, a recent analysis by Yravedra et al. (2021) of
the frequency of anthropogenic marks and tooth marks has concluded that the hominins had primary access to the carcasses
of a wide variety of ungulate prey, even though the frequency of evisceration marks is strikingly low. In this rebuttal, we
analyse the patterns of bone preservation in FN3, which show that the exploitation of bone marrow by the hominins after
hammerstone breakage was a usual activity at the site. Our study also reviews the evidence available on the lesser abilities of
sabretooth cats for carcass processing compared to pantherine felids. This reinforces the hypothesis that primary predators
provided the hominins the opportunity to scavenge sizeable chunks of meat and bone marrow of their prey carcasses before
the arrival of hyaenas. Finally, we also provide new inferences on resource availability and competition intensity among the
members of the carnivore guild in FN3, which reinforce our interpretation that a secondary access by the Oldowan hominins
to the prey leftovers of sabretooth cats was an optimal foraging strategy in the Guadix-Baza Depression.
