Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in southeastern Oregon, where the 18,000-year-old teeth and tools were unearthed.Image credit: Greg Shine/BLM; (CC BY 2.0)
Posted on 07/16/2023 7:02:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
...In 2012, O’Grady’s team found camel teeth fragments under a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption of Mount St. Helens that was dated over 15,000 years ago. The team also uncovered two finely crafted orange agate scrapers, one in 2012 with preserved bison blood residue and another in 2015, buried deeper in the ash. Natural layering of the rockshelter sediments suggests the scrapers are older than both the volcanic ash and camel teeth.
Radiocarbon-dating analysis on the tooth enamel... yielded exciting results: a date of 18,250 years before present (14,900 radiocarbon years).
That date, in association with stone tools, suggests that Rimrock Draw Rockshelter is one of the oldest human-occupation sites in North America.
Additional testing of other camel and bison teeth fragments is currently underway, and archaeo-botanists are studying plant remains from cooking fires as well.
“The identification of 15,000-years-old volcanic ash was a shock, then Tom’s 18,000-years old dates on the enamel, with stone tools and flakes below were even more startling,” O’Grady said.
Presently, Cooper’s Ferry, another archaeological site on BLM-managed public lands in western Idaho, is thought to be the oldest known site in western North America. Evidence there suggests human occupation dating back more than 16,000 years...
These discoveries highlight the importance of good stewardship of our public lands. Damage, destruction, or removal at an archaeological site is a federal crime. Leave what you find and do not collect artifacts or otherwise harm archaeological sites on public lands.
This summer, Dr. O’Grady plans to complete the final archaeology field school at Rimrock Draw. The team will be working on several units where more Ice Age animal remains and artifacts are providing supporting evidence for the 2012 discoveries.
(Excerpt) Read more at blm.gov ...
Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in southeastern Oregon, where the 18,000-year-old teeth and tools were unearthed.Image credit: Greg Shine/BLM; (CC BY 2.0)
From their actions the last couple of years in Portland, I’d say they regressed.
I’ve filled about that many sandbags myself.
All we find are rhyolite. d:^)
The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha sort:
Camel teeth? In North America 15,000 years ago?
Were there any native camels in North America at the time?
All of the productive stone tool makers prolly left the area due to onerous business conditions and self-destructive societal mayhem.
They still vote.
Potential future topics:
:Camels, alpacas, and llamas, other “even-toed ungulates”:
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/u-s-world/where-did-camels-come-from-the-answer-may-surprise-you/
[snip] ...during the Eocene period, 44 million years ago... The Megatylopus was said to be between 12 and 14 feet tall and functioned much like a giraffe when it lived approximately 7 million years ago... Around six to seven million years ago, early camels known as Paracamelus started leaving North America by crossing into Eurasia across the Bering Strait. Once the early camel ancestors arrived in Eurasia, they began branching off into the distinctive camel species we recognize today: the Bactrian camel and the one-humped dromedary camel. [/snip]
Doncha hate it when that happens? ;^)
THE SURPRISING HISTORY OF CAMELS IN NORTH AMERICABy Anna Harnes
February 4, 2023
From the "Grunge" website.Though the idea of camels generally conjures scenes from Arabian caravans or an oasis in the desert, camels once roamed across the Americas, just as they do in Africa and Asia. While there aren't any more of these majestic creatures in the wilds of North America today, they have a fascinating history on the continent.
Many natural historians believe that camels actually originated in North America. According to Interesting Engineering, it is currently believed that camels roamed North America an eye-watering 40 million to 50 million years ago. That means that camels were around for as much as 48 million years before the first human ever existed (per History).
Those same scientists have estimated that it wasn't until 3 million years ago that camels made their way across the Bering Strait via the land bridge that once connected Alaska to Russia. It was this migration that brought camels to Asia and Northern Africa, the two places perhaps most associated with the majestic animals today.
What is even more extraordinary is that recent discoveries have suggested that camels weren't just relegated to one area of North America — they spread all over vastly different terrains. For example, construction workers building a freeway in San Diego unearthed camel fossils in 2020, per The San Diego Union-Tribune. The fossils have since been dated to be around 15 million years old and suggest that the animals once happily lived in the area now claimed by the popular California city.
Camel fossils have also been found in what is almost the total opposite terrain from San Diego. In 2006, archaeologists found a camel skeleton on Canada's Ellesmere Island, located in the northernmost part of Canada and neighboring Greenland. As part of the arctic archipelago ring, the geography of Ellesmere Island can be described as snowy and mountainous with a jagged coastline. Many refer to the terrain on the island as the "horizontal Himalayas," according to The New World Encyclopedia. That said, the fossils showed that the camel was a whopping nine feet tall, so it remains unknown exactly how this species had adapted to survive in the vastly different land type.
Sadly, exact details surrounding the specific biology of the North American camel remain somewhat a mystery, as the animals died out around 11,000 years ago. This corresponds to when humans first made their way to the Americas, suggesting that perhaps they were hunted into extinction, not unlike the fate that almost befell the American bison in the late 19th century. Experts have estimated that around one-eighth of some early Native American diets consisted of camel meat, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
That said, some scientists have suggested that the mammals died out less because of human overkill, but because of geological changes that occurred when the planet adjusted from a glacial climate to an interglacial one, per The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Whatever the reason, the camel was not able to survive.
However, that doesn't mean that remnants of the camel and its history haven't made their mark on the Americas. According to National Geographic, llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas of South America were all descended from the camel. Moreover, camels were to have a small resurgence in North America later in history — but for a different reason entirely.
/bingo
Thanks. I found similar info. See Post #12.
It is surprising. :^) It’s amusing that the two-humped “Bactrian” camel is the camel, while the single-humped is actually called a dromedary.
Not by me, but you know how people can get. :^)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4168270/posts?page=10#10
Camel teeth in Oregon? I didn’t know AOC relatives came from that area?
North American camels were among the megafauna that bit the dust in one of the big kabooms. Seems like a great excuse for a two-fer.
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Do you suppose humans headed east on the Bering Land Bridge met herds of camels heading west and asked themselves “Why area they leaving? What do they know that we don’t?”
I tend to think of AOC as more related to equids, such as donkeys.
More likely the camels were already being used by humans for various things, and were systematically introduced by migrants from the Americas, populating or repopulating NE Asia. :^)
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