Of Big Animals and Early Americans

Early North Americans Lived With Extinct Giant Beasts

The idea is not really new; we've had human artifacts and megafauna remains that date from the same period for quite some time.  In fact, it's been dogma that human hunting and other influences played a large role in the disappearance of the megafauna from North America.  But what these researchers have that they claim others don't is human and megafauna bones in deposits that come from the same age:

Ground Sloth spine and ribs

A new University of Florida study that determined the age of skeletal remains provides evidence humans reached the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age and lived alongside giant extinct mammals.

The study published online May 3 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology addresses the century-long debate among scientists about whether human and mammal remains found at Vero Beach in the early 1900s date to the same time period. Using rare earth element analysis to measure the concentration of naturally occurring metals absorbed during fossilization, researchers show modern humans in North America co-existed with large extinct mammals about 13,000 years ago, including mammoths, mastodons and giant ground sloths.

Ground Sloth paw

"The Vero site is still the only site where there was an abundance of actual human bones, not just artifacts, associated with the animals," said co-author Barbara Purdy, UF anthropology professor emeritus and archaeology curator emeritus at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. "Scientists who disputed the age of the human remains in the early 20th century just did not want to believe that people were in the Western Hemisphere that early. And 100 years later, every single book written about the prehistory of North America includes this site and the controversy that still exists."

Ground Sloth claw

Following discovery of the fossils in South Florida between 1913 and 1916, some prominent scientists convinced researchers the human skeletons were from more recent burials and not as old as the animals, a question that remained unanswered because no dating methods existed.

Giant Sloth Hands

"The uptake of rare earth elements is time-dependent, so an old fossil is going to have very different concentrations of rare earth elements than bones from a more recent human burial," said lead author Bruce MacFadden, Florida Museum vertebrate paleontology curator. "We found the human remains have statistically the same concentrations of rare earth elements as the fossils."

Strangely, pretty girls seem to pose with Ground Sloth fossils.  Maybe they were onto something.

 My belated thanks to Wombat-Socho for linking this in "Rule 5 Tuesday" at The Other McCain.