An archaeological crew works at the Rio Sonora excavation site, which has yielded gomphothere fossils, and tools and spear tips that are likely more than 12,000 years old.
Posted on 11/16/2009 10:13:24 AM PST by BGHater
The secret is out: Man and gomphotheres once coexisted in Sonora.
Tools and spear tips found with fossil bones at a remote Sonoran site suggest that Clovis-era hunters butchered two juvenile specimens of the elephantlike megafauna about 13,000 years ago.
It's the first discovery of such recent evidence of gomphotheres in North America, said Vance Holliday, a University of Arizona anthropologist.
It's also the first time gomphothere fossils were found together with implements made by Clovis people, the oldest known inhabitants of North America, Holliday said. The discovery, on a remote ranch in the Rio Sonora watershed, was actually made in 2007 but was kept quiet to avoid alerting fossil hunters to it. Archaeologists from Mexico and the United States named the site "El Fin del Mundo," or "The End of the World."
They continue to work the site in the Mexican state that borders Arizona but presented some preliminary findings last month at a Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Ore.
Holliday said Guadalupe Sanchez of Mexico's national institute of anthropology was originally taken to the site by a rancher who had discovered large bones in an arroyo.
Holliday said he was unsure if Clovis people were hunting gomphotheres or scavenging them. In either case, Holliday said, "this would be the first documentation that there was some sort of human interaction with gomphotheres in North America."
Holliday said the international team of archaeologists from the UA and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City expect to complete excavation of the site this winter.
Archaeologists have yet to find human fossil evidence of the culture they call Clovis, named for Clovis, N.M., where scientists uncovered the first distinctive spear tips from a period about 13,000 years ago.
The San Pedro Valley has since proved to be a fertile area for Clovis investigation. At the most famous site, Murray Springs near Sierra Vista, scientists uncovered spear tips among the bones of mammoths, leading them to postulate that the Clovis people hunted the megafauna that once populated a wetter, milder Southwest in the Ice Age — possibly hunting the mammoths to extinction. The Murray Springs site also contained bones of several other North American megafauna, as well as tools and a hearth.
Now, scientists might be able to add the elephantlike gomphotheres to the list of Clovis prey. Gomphotheres were thought to have vanished from North America 100,000 years ago, said David Lambert, a biologist at the Louisiana School of Science, Mathematics and the Arts. "This is a Lazarus effect," he said. "Something disappears and then, out of the blue, pops up again."
Lambert, who has unearthed three gomphotheres in Florida — all more than 120,000 years old — said "this discovery is certainly a surprise."
There are a variety of gomphotheres — some with crocodile-like jaws and four tusks. The one that populated North America is called Cuvieronius and is about the size of an Asian elephant and elephantlike in appearance, Lambert said.
Holliday is executive director of the Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund, which searches for evidence of the earliest paleo-Indian habitation of the Southwest.
Holliday said archaeologists expect the Rio Sonora area, the south drainage of the watershed that feeds the San Pedro, to yield more evidence of Clovis habitation.
The Fin del Mundo site, which he says is more than 12,000 years old, also includes an extensive Clovis encampment, he said.
"It was a pristine site; nobody had ever been there to collect, probably just due to the remoteness of it. It was astonishing the number of artifacts on the surface," Holliday said.
An archaeological crew works at the Rio Sonora excavation site, which has yielded gomphothere fossils, and tools and spear tips that are likely more than 12,000 years old.
‘Tools and spear tips found with fossil bones at a remote Sonoran site suggest that Clovis-era hunters butchered two juvenile specimens of the elephantlike megafauna about 13,000 years ago.’
Clovis BBQ ping.
If they found speartips with the bones, that would mean one of them dropped and died by a bunch of spears, together with the bones of a large animal. That would suggest the person they found was preparing the animal to be roasted, and he somehow met his demise.
The setup of it smells fishy to me.
Tastes like chicken, looks like Pelosi
At that point in time, man was primarily a nomad. You know, hunter/gatherer - if it’s too big to lug back to the village, then you move the village to the dead elephant. Elephants would be slow moving, lots of meat, and you could basically hunt one down, build a fire, spend a couple days feasting and then move on.
Extinction seems obvious, Elephants take decades to reach sexual maturity, a group of humans who have learned how to hunt them could easily consume them into extinction. They don’t run like Deer or Elk, produce more meat - it doesn’t seem too far fetched to see these animals as an ideal food source - until they are all ate up.
Looks like they crossed an Elephant with a Rhino.
Whaddaya call it?
‘El-eph-ri-no!
Of course they did, this is no surpise to me at all ...
Everyone knows the earth is only 6,000 years old. /sarc
Prehistoric Clovis culture roamed southwards:
Stone tools and bones of an ancient tusker found...
Nature | October 21, 2009 | Rex Dalton
Posted on 11/05/2009 2:29:13 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2379470/posts
also of interest:
Car-Sized Creature Whacked with Tail’s Sweet Spot (until 10,000 years ago)
Natural History Magazine | Nov 15, 2009 | Harvey Leifert
Posted on 11/15/2009 12:39:09 PM PST by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2387035/posts
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks BGHater. |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe · | ||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
