Sunday, May 15, 2016

Humans Hunted Mastodon in Florida Nearly 15,000 Years Ago

The discovery of ancient artifacts and mastodon bones in a submerged sinkhole shows that humans first inhabited the southeastern corner of North America 1,500 years earlier than previously assumed.
A collaborative research team has pulled up dozens of stone tools and the remains of extinct animals from the Page-Ladson site in Florida, a 26-foot-deep sinkhole located in the Aucilla River just outside of Tallahassee. It now represents the oldest known site of human life in the southeastern United States, dating back approximately 14,500 years. It’s also the oldest submerged archaeological site in all the Americas, and one of the oldest sites on continent.
The discovery shows that a population of pre-Clovis hunters—possibly with the assistance of dogs—hunted mastodon in what is now Florida. This research has been published in the latest edition of Science Advancesand was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of scientists from Florida State University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Michigan...


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