Florida sinkhole discoveries suggest we've been wrong all along about the first humans in America
- 8 years ago
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — A collection of fossils and artifacts retrieved from a sinkhole in a river on Florida's Gulf Coast may provide some of the oldest evidence of human presence in North America.
The Page-Ladson archaeological site, submerged 35 feet under Florida's Aucilla River, was the site of several digs in the 1980s and 1990s.
A new team that included researchers from Florida State University and Texas A&M University decided to follow up on decades-old research between 2012 and 2014. After more than a hundred dives into the sinkhole, the team published their findings last week in the journal Science Advances.
The researchers discovered mastodon bones, fossilized dung and stone tools in the sinkhole that provide compelling evidence that humans spread across North America far earlier than archaeologists previously thought.
According to their research paper, the stone tools recovered from the sinkhole include a biface, a stone that's been manually sharpened on both ends. On a previous excavation at the site, archaeologists found an adult mastodon tusk that appeared to have human-made grooves along its surface, reported the Christian Science Monitor.
Prehistoric humans called the Clovis culture were believed to have originally arrived in North America via a land bridge about 13,000 years ago — as mammoth bones and spearheads have revealed.
However, according to the Guardian, some of the artifacts recently discovered within the Aucilla River date back to more than 14,550 years ago when the land bridge may not have existed.
What these new discoveries suggest is that a land bridge from Siberia may not be the answer to how the first humans initially colonized North America. Moreover, evidence suggests that people were in North America before the Clovis.
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The Page-Ladson archaeological site, submerged 35 feet under Florida's Aucilla River, was the site of several digs in the 1980s and 1990s.
A new team that included researchers from Florida State University and Texas A&M University decided to follow up on decades-old research between 2012 and 2014. After more than a hundred dives into the sinkhole, the team published their findings last week in the journal Science Advances.
The researchers discovered mastodon bones, fossilized dung and stone tools in the sinkhole that provide compelling evidence that humans spread across North America far earlier than archaeologists previously thought.
According to their research paper, the stone tools recovered from the sinkhole include a biface, a stone that's been manually sharpened on both ends. On a previous excavation at the site, archaeologists found an adult mastodon tusk that appeared to have human-made grooves along its surface, reported the Christian Science Monitor.
Prehistoric humans called the Clovis culture were believed to have originally arrived in North America via a land bridge about 13,000 years ago — as mammoth bones and spearheads have revealed.
However, according to the Guardian, some of the artifacts recently discovered within the Aucilla River date back to more than 14,550 years ago when the land bridge may not have existed.
What these new discoveries suggest is that a land bridge from Siberia may not be the answer to how the first humans initially colonized North America. Moreover, evidence suggests that people were in North America before the Clovis.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to TomoNews, where we animate the most entertaining news on the internets. Come here for an animated look at viral headlines, US news, celebrity gossip, salacious scandals, dumb criminals and much more! Subscribe now for daily news animations that will knock your socks off.
Visit our official website for all the latest, uncensored videos: http://us.tomonews.net
Check out our Android app: http://bit.ly/1rddhCj
Check out our iOS app: http://bit.ly/1gO3z1f
Get top stories delivered to your inbox everyday: http://bit.ly/tomo-newsletter
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Twitter @tomonewsus http://www.twitter.com/TomoNewsUS
Google+ http://plus.google.com/+TomoNewsUS/
Instagram @tomonewsus http://instagram.com/tomonewsus