An astonishing discovery has been made by the Paleontologists digging in sediments at two large caves on a Gibraltar beach. They have been successful in tracing clear evidence that, mussels and other mollusks, fish and even marine mammals like seals and dolphins were included in the active diet of Neanderthals, who resided here nearly 30,000 years ago. They have found that they even hunted the land animals. 

In the Gorham’s and Vanguard caves on the eastern side of the rock, remains of meals that included bones from monk seals and common and bottlenose dolphins were discovered by Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, Christopher B. Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London and colleagues. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reported these astonishing new findings. 

The researchers have also found a big fireplace at the Vanguard cave, which actually seems to have been used to prepare the carcasses of the animals rather than cooking. The reason behind this is that heating the animal would actually might have made it a lot easier for the Neanderthals to remove the flesh from the bones and then break them to reach the marrow. 
 
Many bones discovered seems to be from young mammals that raises the possibility that Neanderthals hunted during the breeding season, probably when seals came to the shore for long periods to reproduce. These all evidences have at least made one thing clear for sure that Neanderthals often visited sea to hunt for sea animals.