Center for the Study of the First AmericansDepartment of AnthropologyTexas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352www.centerfirstamericans.com

Volume 23, Number 1 ■■■■■ January, 2008

he Center for the Study of the FirstAmericans fosters research and publicinterest in the Peopling of the Americas.T

The Center, an integral part of the Departmentof Anthropology at Texas A&M University,promotes interdisciplinary scholarly dialogueamong physical, geological, biological andsocial scientists. The Mammoth Trumpet,news magazine of the Center, seeks to involveyou in the peopling of the Americas by reportingon developments in all pertinent areas ofknowledge.

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A Fiery End to Clovis?This photo was taken by Soviet geologist Kulik 21 years after a

comet exploded in the upper atmosphere over Siberia in1908. Trees, 80 million of them within a radius of 16 miles,

were flattened and flash-burned when a chunk of ice and dusthalf the size of a football field slammed into Earth at 70,000

miles an hour. Geophysicist Allen West and his research teamsay this was a mere whisper, however, compared with the

roar 12,900 years ago when a comet spanning kilometersshook North America. Intense heat formed a shroud of soot,

creating a “nuclear winter” that ushered in the Younger Dryascold snap. North American megafauna were doomed, and

Clovis people’s numbers were so decimated that the culturefell into swift decline, never to recover. To support this bold

theory, Dr. West points to more than a dozen lines of evi-dence collected at Clovis-age sites across North America andas far away as Belgium. Installment 1 of our multi-part series

exploring this Earth-shaking event starts on page 1.

Volume 23, Number 1 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology

January, 2008 Texas A&M University, 4352 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352 ISSN 8755-6898

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.org and http://anthropology.tamu.edu

4 The last refuge of mammothsin North AmericaUniversity of Alaska scientistsand colleagues are exploring acave on a remote island in theBering Sea, a natural trap forprey and predators alike.

8 A sinkhole in Florida gives upits treasuresOxygen-depleted water preservesevidence of life that flourishedaround Little Salt Spring at theend of the Ice Age, including agiant tortoise that became ameal for Paleoamerican hunters.

12 Presence betrayed by theirhandiwork: broken andflaked mammoth leg bonesNot sediment loading, notanimal gnawing or trampling.Only humans, says Steve Holenof Denver Museum of Nature &Science, could have so extensivelymodified mammoth bones onthe Great Plains . . . 7,000radiocarbon years before Clovis!

THECLOVIS COMETPart I:Evidence for a Cosmic Collision12,900 Years Ago

OR REASONS still not entirely under-stood, most of the large animals in theNew World became extinct at the end of

realized. If the authors of a study publishedin the 7 October 2007 issue of the Proceed-ings of the National Academy of Science(PNAS) are correct—and over a dozen con-verging lines of evidence argue that theyare—then a comet hit North America

12,900 years ago, dooming the Pleis-tocene megafauna and decimating thelocal human population.

Allen West, whose research wasthe impetus for the PNAS study, real-izes that some observers won’t likethe theory. But he’s convinced it’s theexplanation that best fits the facts.The signs are well documented andcopious; when taken together, theyform a composite “smoking gun” that

Allen West sampling abackhoe trench profile atthe Big Pine Tree site for

Clovis-age sediments. BILL

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Fthe Pleistocene epoch. For decades, theirpassing has been a source of wonder andcontention among the researchers whostudy them. Natural vegeta-tion shifts, climate changes,over-hunting by humans,plagues, and various combi-nations thereof have beenput forward as proximatecauses of the extinctions,though no definitive con-sensus has been reached.

As it turns out, all thosetheories might be furtheroff the mark than previously

2 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

Mammoth Trumpet, Statement of Our PolicyMany years may pass between the time an important discovery is made and the acceptance of researchresults by the scientific community. To facilitate communication among all parties interested in stayingabreast of breaking news in First Americans studies, the Mammoth Trumpet, a science news magazine,provides a forum for reporting and discussing new and potentially controversial information importantto understanding the peopling of the Americas. We encourage submission of articles to the ManagingEditor and letters to the Editor. Views published in the Mammoth Trumpet are the views ofcontributors, and do not reflect the views of the editor or Center personnel.

–Michael R. Waters, Director

The Mammoth Trumpet (ISSN 8755-6898) is published quarterly by the Center forthe Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University,College Station, TX 77843-4352. Phone (979) 845-4046; fax (979) 845-4070; e-mailcsfa@tamu.edu. Periodical postage paid at College Station, TX 77843-4352 and atadditional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:Mammoth TrumpetDepartment of Anthropology, Texas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352

Copyright © 2008 Center for the Study of the First Americans. Permission is herebygiven to any non-profit or educational organization or institution to reproduce withoutcost any materials from the Mammoth Trumpet so long as they are then distributed atno more than actual cost. The Center further requests that notification of reproductionof materials under these conditions be sent to the Center. Address correspondence to theeditor of Mammoth Trumpet, 2122 Scout Road, Lenoir, NC 28645.

Michael R. Waters Director and General Editore-mail: mwaters@tamu.edu

Ted Goebel Associate Director and Editor, Current Research inthe Pleistocenee-mail: goebel@tamu.edu

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Laurie Lind Office Manager

C & C Wordsmiths Layout and Design

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.com

The Center for the Study of the First Americans is a non-profit organization. Sub-scription to the Mammoth Trumpet is by membership in the Center.

strongly suggests that something cameout of the stars and hit us at the begin-ning of the Holocene. Following stan-dard scientific protocol, West and hisresearch team have entertained manyother theories in search of a viable alter-native. But in the end, he says, “We surecan’t think of one.”

Back to the deep freezeJust as things were warming up after thelong Pleistocene Ice Age, an abrupttemperature reversal plunged theNorthern Hemisphere into a thousand-year cold spell known as the YoungerDryas (YD) interval. The beginning ofthe YD in North America, Greenland,and Western Europe is well establishedat 12,900 CALYBP. At about the sametime, the last of the Pleistocene mega-fauna were disappearing in North Amer-ica and the Clovis culture was breathingits last.

A recent reexamination of the Clovistime range by geochronologist Tom Staf-ford and geoarchaeologist Mike Waters(MT 22-3, -4, “Clovis Dethroned: ANew Perspective on the First Ameri-cans”) makes it clear that, among otherthings, Clovis came to an end in the ex-traordinarily brief period 12,800–12,925CALYBP. Their conclusion is consistentwith data compiled by C. Vance Haynes,who has demonstrated the presence ofdark organic deposits, known to scien-tists as “black mats,” that mark the endof the Clovis era at more than 50 differ-ent archaeological sites across NorthAmerica. They form a boundary that’seasily identified in about one-third ofthe known Clovis sites, and the bestexplanation for them is that they repre-sent significant organic enrichment ofthe local sediments via algal blooms or asudden infusion of charcoal or soot. Theformation of black mats dates con-clusively to the beginning of the YDinterval.

The sudden onset of the YoungerDryas is implicated, therefore, in thedecline of Clovis. But what triggeredthe YD in the first place? Traditionalexplanations center on a sudden influxof glacial meltwater into the North At-lantic, which would have disrupted thesaline density and interfered with estab-lished patterns of ocean circulation thatcontributed to the warming of the

Northern Hemisphere. This explana-tion seems reasonable, since it’s wellknown that modern England, for ex-ample, would be significantly colderwithout the Gulf Stream. But oddlyenough, it didn’t happen during any pre-vious interglacial, so some randomevent must have triggered the abruptclimate change.

That random event might have beenthe impact of a relatively small highlyfragmented comet or asteroid, particu-

larly one that exploded in the upper at-mosphere, igniting fires over a largearea. Such an event would fill the atmo-sphere with soot and dust that wouldblock out significant amounts of solarradiation for weeks or months, resultingin a “nuclear winter” effect. Even afterthe skies cleared, feedback mechanismsinvolving reflected solar radiation fromnewly formed snow and glaciers wouldmaintain frigid temperatures for centu-ries.

January ■ 2008 3

Hit me with your best shotYou might think the idea of a giant space object hitting the Earthis outlandish, but it’s not as if it hasn’t happened before. In fact,mounting evidence suggests that it’s happened hundreds oftimes in the geological past. The best-known example is theCretaceous-Tertiary (KT) event, which killed off the non-aviandinosaurs and paved the way for a mammalian florescence thatcontinues to this day. The general scientific consensus is thatthe KT event occurred when a celestial body 10 km (6 mi) acrosssmashed into Mexico’s Yucatán penin-sula 65 MYA, putting an end to the Cre-taceous period with thunderous finality.Evidence also points to a similar butmuch larger impact 251 MYA, at the endof the Permian. Both events occurredabruptly, both are marked in the geo-logic record by enrichment of certainelements and the formation of itemstypically associated with extraterrestrial(ET) impactors, and both caused massextinctions that killed off a sizable per-centage of life on Earth.

ET impactors come in two basic fla-vors, asteroids and comets. Both theCretaceous and Permian objects are be-lieved to have been asteroids, giantspace rocks that are stony or metallic in composition. Comets,on the other hand, are more like vast dirty snowballs, looselycompacted masses of ice and dust that originate in the outerreaches of the solar system. Although they sound less danger-ous than asteroids, comets can be bad news, too. In 1908, forexample, something exploded 8 km over Tunguska, Siberia,blowing down and flash-burning 2,150 km2 (830 mi2) worth oftimber without leaving an obvious crater— exactly what would

be expected of a cometary impact. As faras we can tell, the Tunguska event wascaused by a comet fragment less than 50 macross. The object responsible for the YDand Dr. Haynes’s black mats is believed tohave been something similar, but muchlarger: a full-fledged comet that makes theTunguska impactor look tiny by compari-son. No crater has ever been linked to theevent; nor, given the nature of the beast, is

one ever expected to be.

Building the case for the Clovis eventDr. West is a geophysicist who spent most of his career consult-ing for petroleum exploration and mining companies on threecontinents, so he’s well versed in the Earth’s history. Afterretiring several years ago, he landed a deal to write a book abouta subject of great interest to him: the possibility of ET impacts inthe recent geologic past. He was familiar with a theory proposed

by Drs. Richard Firestone andWilliam Topping in these verypages (MT 16-2, “TerrestrialEvidence of a Nuclear Catas-trophe in Paleoindian Times”),which argued that a nearbysupernova event had enrichedClovis-age sediments withradiocarbon, skewing Paleodates by about 20,000 years.While the Firestone/Toppingtheory is now considered un-

Chobot, ~13

Morley, ~13Lake Hind, 12.76

Wally’sBeach, 12.97

Gainey,~12.4

Gainey,~12.4

Topper,13.5

BlackwaterDraw, 12.9Murray Springs,

12.99

Daisy Cave, 13.09 CarolinaBays

SiteSite with black matHigh IridiumNo detectable Iridiumvalue (<0.5 ppb)Approximate extent of NorthAmerican ice sheets at 12.9 ka

Lommel,12.94

Lommel,12.94

Sites investigated in the studyincluding Lommel, Belgium, with theircalibrated Younger Dryas boundary(YDB) dates. For the Carolina Bays, 3of 5 sediment analyses revealeddetectable Ir values, though ages ofthe Bays determined by opticallystimulated luminescence (OSL) areinconsistent. The approximate extentof the North American ice sheets at12.9 ka is consistent with the researchteam’s observations that all sites wereice-free at the time of the YD event.

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Typical nanodiamonds.Scale is in nanometers (amillionth of a millimeter).

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likely, it was based in part upon Topping’s recovery of tinymagnetic microspherules in immediate post-Clovis sediments atthe Gainey, Michigan, Paleoamerican site. These micro-spherules are part of the normal cosmic rain, but at Gainey theyare present at abnormally high levels. West wondered if he hadfind the same result at other Clovis sites.

“As it turns out, there were a lot of the early sites in my

4 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

ROM THE BOTTOM of a subterranean ice box on a smallisland in the Bering Sea, researchers have recovered theremains of a woolly mammoth considered to be the

isolated in North America. They lie about 500 km southwest ofthe Alaskan mainland and about 400 km northwest of the Aleu-tian Islands. The islands today are covered with thin grasses andalder shrubs. Since the islands were connected to the mainlanduntil about 13,000 years ago, Yesner notes that mammoths hadample time to get there. Mammoth and polar bear remains havebeen noted on the Pribilof Islands over the past 175 years.

FFyoungest example of Quaternary megafauna yet found in NorthAmerica.

The mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was discovered inQagna Cave (aptly named for the Aleut word for bone) on St.

St. PaulIsland✪

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Anchorage

Otter I.

No prehistoric archaeological sites have been found on St.Paul Island; Aleut oral tradition suggests the island was knownto exist, but it remained uninhabited until the late 18th century,when Aleuts were brought there by Russian fur hunters.

There have been reports over theyears of mammoth teeth recoveredon the island and subsequently lost.The mammoth found in QagnaCave had fallen some 30 ft beneaththe surface of this remote, wind-swept island. Its remains were

surrounded by the bonesof other mid-Ho-locene fauna in-cluding polar bear

(Ursus maritimus), caribou or reindeer(Rangifer tarandus), and Arctic fox (Alopex

lagopus). Qagna Cave provided specimens urgentlyneeded for study.

Qagna Cave discovered and scrutinizedThe cave and its contents came to light in the winter of 1999–2000, when two reindeer hunters riding an all-terrain vehicle

Paul Island in the Pribilof Island chain of eastern Beringia,according to David Yesner. Dr. Yesner, professor of Anthropol-ogy at the University of Alaska Anchorage,and primary spokesman for the ongoingresearch project, says that radiocarbonanalysis shows the mammoth died about5700 RCYBP (approximately 6,500 cali-brated calendar years ago)—long after thespecies is commonly thought to have be-come extinct on the continent about 13,000years ago.

Extensive details of the project will appear in afuture issue of Quaternary Research journal. Col-laborating with Yesner on the project were Dr.Douglas W. Veltre, professor of Anthropology atUAA; Dr. Kristine J. Crossen, associate professor ofGeology at UAA; Dr. Russell W. Graham of theEarth and Mineral Sciences Museum at Pennsyl-vania State University; and Dr. Joan W. Coltrain,professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah.

A remote time capsuleThe Pribilof Islands, volcanic in origin, are among the most

The Lastto Fall

Pribilof IslandsMammoths

Pribilof IslandsMammoths

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Two views of St. Paul Island. Above, St. Paulvillage, with northern fur seals on the beach.Left, volcanic cinder cones dominate thecentral portion of St. Paul Island, as seen inthis winter aerial photo.

January ■ 2008 5

through grass on the island’s centralhighlands nearly fell into a large holethat disappeared underground. Afternews of the discovery reached thenearby town of about 500 people, visi-tors explored the cave and collected cu-rios including mammoth and polar bearteeth.

In early 2000, some of those itemswere sent to Veltre at UAA for identifica-tion. The next summer local folksguided Veltre, together with a colleaguefrom Arkansas and a group of students,on an inspection tour of the cave.

What they discovered was a verticalshaft, about 2 m wide at its narrowest,that drops 4 m from the surface to theroof of the cave. Using head lamps forlight, the crew descended a long ladderinto the cave, which is about 10 m highand 15 m in diameter. Crossen de-scribes it as a typical lava tube cave,whose overhead entrance was createdwhen the ceiling collapsed after the lavaflowed out of the cave. Despite the dark-ness, dampness, and chill, Veltre says he was dazzled by what hesaw there.

“I was amazed to see bones lying all over the cave floor,” herecalls. “During about an hour in the cave, we made a smallcollection of items, and I knew right away from the mammoth,polar bear, and caribou bones that this was worth coming backto take a look at. We returned [to the university] with samples ofmammoth tooth fragments, polar bear teeth, and some photos.We really didn’t want to disturb the cave very much.”

It was clear to Veltre that they had stumbled onto a “naturaltrap” for animals. Back in his office, he left a mammoth molarsitting on his desk inplain sight, where itattracted Yesner’s eyewhenever he walkedpast. If he intended itas bait, it worked. AsYesner says, “I startedsuggesting to himthat we really ought toput together somekind of project and goback to the cave.” Be-cause it was probablyone of the most iso-lated places in NorthAmerica, Yesner rea-soned it would be theideal setting to studyissues related to mammoth extinction. “We just privately said toeach other that it would really be neat if this turned out to besome kind of long-surviving Holocene mammoth site,” Yesneradds.

From this “hunch” emerged a de-tailed research project. Funded withmoney from the University of AlaskaAnchorage, and a variety of privatesources—and outfitted, thanks to logis-tical support (including lodging andlaboratory facilities) from the AleutTDX tribal corporation of St. Paul—ateam of specialists returned to the cavein 2003.

A dark, chilling experienceAn equipment problem immediatelyadded excitement to their project. “Weintended to bring along a 40-foot-longladder to make it easier to get into the30-foot-deep cave,” Yesner says, the ex-tra ladder length intended to providegenerous gripping surface for safetywhile preparing to descend and climb

Kristine Crossen emerges fromQagnax Cave during the week-long investigation in 2003.

Team members excavate amammoth molar from beneathlarge blocks of roof fall.

off the ladder. “Unfortunately,” he relates, “it turned out that atthe last minute somebody had bought the 40-foot ladder and sowe bought a 36-foot one, which barely cleared the lip of the caveshaft and “made getting into and out of the cave a bit adventure-some, a bit hairy.”

Once again, this time equipped with head-lamps and hand-held Coleman lanterns, they entered the cave for a week ofintense work. Besides providing light, the lanterns radiatedwelcome heat. The temperature in the soggy cave hoveredaround 35 degrees F, considerably cooler than the outsidetemperature that, in the 40s, seemed balmy. “It just wasn’t that

much above freezing downthere,” Yesner says.

They set out to reconstruct thegeologic context of the cave, mapthe cave and its artifacts, and col-lect specimens for analysis. In ad-dition to precisely dating cave re-mains, researchers hoped todetermine how and when mam-moths and polar bears got to theisland, how they got into thecave, and what might have hap-pened to them after that.

But first they had to overcome the problem of movingaround bones scattered like pick-up-sticks across the cavefloor. Crossen remembers that it was difficult to walk, sincethe cave floor “was covered with a thin moist and gooey dust.”

6 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

It was also littered with boul-ders and rockfall that often hidinteresting things such asprime bone or tooth specimens.The floor, she says, was so cov-ered in debris that “it was al-most impossible to walk aroundwithout stepping on bones.”

The cave also contained sidepassages too constricted by rock-fall debris to allow researchers toenter. Researchers inspected therecesses by lamp light, saw littleof interest, and decided not toinvestigate at that time.

A large debris cone built upbeneath the roof opening neededcareful excavation. Crossen de-

Seven mammoth bones recovered fromthe cave—four molar teeth and bone frag-ments that include a scapula—are all be-lieved to have come from one animal at thesmaller end of the standard size range forthe Beringian woolly mammoth. Yesnernotes that 24 collection units contain hun-dreds of additional mammoth molar platefragments, or tooth flakes. No mammothtusks were found, prompting researchers tospeculate that they may have been removedat an earlier date.

Many of the polar bear and caribou bonesshowed signs of having been chewed by car-nivores. The mammoth bones were gnawedto the “point of unrecognizability,” research-ers note. Fox bones, by contrast, showedvery little taphonomic alteration. Research-ers concluded from this evidence that“trapped, but still living, foxes” were prob-ably the primary scavengers. But polar bearsmight have participated when earlier animalswere trapped in the cave, probably having

accidentally tumbled down the grass-hidden shaft.Dates from the polar bear bones (ranging from 4000 to 4600

RCYBP) suggest to Yesner that the bears probably crossed to theisland on pack ice during a spike in the Neoglacial period—approximately 4,000 to 4,600 years ago.

As for mammoths, researchers suggest in their joint paperthey likely came to the island when sea level was at its lowestduring the Last Glacial Maximum, about 18,000 years ago—when the Pribilof Islands were a high range of hills near the

edge of the Beringianplain. The islands wereseparated from the main-land around 13,000 yearsago. Dating of the Qag-na Cave mammothbones and teeth leaveslittle doubt, says Yesner,that “Wrangel Island inthe Russian Arctic is notthe only isolated placewhere Beringian mam-moths survived into themid-Holocene.” And thesuite of dates fromQagna Cave also firmlyestablish that “these arethe youngest dates ever

for mammoths, or other Pleistocene megafauna, in NorthAmerica.”

Mammoths in literatureResearch elsewhere shows that Beringian woolly mammothssurvived on Wrangel Island until at least 3,700 years ago (MT14-1, “Mammoths’ Last Stand”). Because the specimenswere quite small—but are now widely accepted as falling

A member of the 2003 researchteam investigates one of the side

chambers of Qagnax Cave.

A ladder descends from thecave mouth to the debris

cone on the floor.

scribes the material as fine sand and silt, likely windblown intothe cave and deposited so that at its trailing edge it feathered intothe cave floor. Later grain-size analysis of the sediments pro-vided some surprises. Odd-sized particles in the sedimentsviewed under a scanning electron microscope turned out to bediatoms. “So it seems there is a shaft of sunlight that comesdown to the floor of the cave,” Crossen explains, “and there aresome photosynthetic organisms living in the bottom of the caveas well.”

Bones are the prizeThere was no shortage of bones toinspect. According to Yesner, “wemapped in 100 different units, orclusters, of bones. It took us fivedays to map and collect all the mate-rial.” Excavating a test in the debriscone, however, revealed “next tonothing” in the way of bones. Re-searchers didn’t find significant cul-tural material in the cave, onlyfragments of old cut dimension-type

lumber, indicating someone may have entered the cave duringthe World War II era. There is no way of knowing, of course,what might have been taken from the cave at that time.

The team paper reports that researchers recovered 1,750bones from the cave; 70 percent are from at least 25 Arcticfoxes. The collection also includes 250 bones from as many asseven different polar bears, 275 bones from at least four cari-bou, and a dozen or so bird bones.

January ■ 2008 7

within the standard size range forBeringian woolly mammoths—mislead-ing publicity dubbed them a“dwarfed” version of the woollymammoth. Consequently they werebeing linked to remains of a verysmall Columbian mammoth (Mam-muthus columbi), whose completeskeleton was found on southernCalifornia’s Channel Islands in 1994and determined to be a dwarf sub-species (pygmy mammoth, or Mam-muthus exilis)—which coexistedwith early Americans (MT 21-4,“First Lady of the New World: Ar-lington Springs Woman”). A recentpaper by researchers from NorthernArizona University notes that the re-mains of small mammoths werefound on the Channel Islands fromthe time of the Coast and Geodeticsurvey there in 1856, and that theseanimals first appeared in scientificliterature in 1876. In light of recentstudies of the woolly mammoths ofWrangel Island and Qagna Cave,Yesner says it now appears thatColumbian mammoths might havehad the only true dwarf subspecies,believed to have become smaller

through selective evolution triggered bysuch increasing environmental stresses

Volume 242007

The price is the same as last year’s edition,but not the size: Yearbook 24 in the seriesweighs in at 245 meaty pages.

Our “Special Focus” section zeroes in onthe Younger Dryas cold snap, whose onsetcoincided with the extinction of megafaunaand the abrupt disappearance of the Clovisculture. Anthropologists join forces withspecialists in atmospheric and earthsciences, geography, and oceanography inexploring the cause and effects of thispivotal event in Earth’s history.

Count on reports from scientists aroundthe world to keep you abreast of newfindings in the Archaeology of Eurasia andthe Americas, and in all aspects of Paleo-environments. The section on Databasestells you how to find radiocarbon dateson-line from mammoth localities innorthern Asia (eastern Russia, Japan,China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia).

If you haven’t preordered vol. 24, Current Research in the Pleistocene,use the form inside the rear cover to order your copy.

as a shrinking land mass and popula-tion overcrowding.

How did these mammoths avoidextinction?Although Yesner and the other re-searchers still don’t know for certainhow the mammoths survived on St.Paul Island well into the Holocene, theyspeculate that the species may havebenefited from the extreme isolation ofthe Pribilofs and consequent freedomfrom human predation. We must bearin mind that new research has refutedthe “blitzkrieg” theory, which castsman, the predator, in the role of theprincipal agent of megafaunal extinc-tion; instead, scientists now have evi-dence that ecological changes trig-gered a double pulse of extinctions andthat human hunters were at most a mar-ginal factor (MT 22-1, “The Timing ofMegafaunal Extinctions in NorthAmerica: Earlier Than You Think”). Itcould be argued, of course, that St. PaulIsland represents a special case, for ifeven a small band of efficient huntersarmed with Clovis-tipped spears hadgained access to this insular sanctuary,they quite likely could have killed off

the entire mammoth population.Nevertheless, the island re-mained free of human predatorsand also escaped the ecologicalcalamity at the Pleistocene/Ho-locene transition that doomedmammoths everywhere else inNorth America.

Yesner feels that a part of theanswer to the prolonged exist-ence of mammoths on St. PaulIsland may be found in their diet.Carbon and nitrogen isotopeanalysis of the Qagna speci-mens suggests that they enjoyedunusually nutritious forage—lushgrasses enriched by mid-Ho-locene tephras that were partiallyformed by extensive volcanic ac-tivity, the same volcanic activitythat formed the cave. “There is noquestion that the maritime grass-lands provided a rich environ-

Entering Qagnax Cave,summer 2000, as part of thefirst examination of the cave.

continued on page 18

8 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

EFORE THE NORTHERN GLACIERS MELTED, sea levelsrose, and water became more plentiful, long before therewas an Everglades and Lake Okeechobee, Florida’s lower

Clausen maintains that the stake’s point of entry into thetortoise shell—along with carbonized long bones and fire-hardened clay found around the tortoise remains—stronglysupports his hunter-and-prey hypothesis. Ambiguous, say thecritics, who want more evidence. Although Gifford concedes

Above, low-altitude oblique aerial view of Little Salt Springfrom the south (January 2006). Inset, Clausen’s 1979 drawingof a cross section of the spring: 1, the 27-meter ledge onwhich the tortoise and stake were excavated; 2, the 16-meterledge; 3, the drop-off at 12–13 m, where most of the woodenstakes have been excavated.

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Bpeninsula was a cool, dry savanna-like landscape about twice asbroad as it is today. Freshwater was scarce. Near the center ofthis prehistoric landscape, a site in south-west Florida today less than 10 miles inlandfrom the Gulf of Mexico, sparkled a particu-larly attractive watering hole that drewhunters and prey.

Near the twilight of the last Ice Age, ahungry prehistoric hunter watched a giantland tortoise crawl along the edge of thisoasis. For the hunter, this ancient eveningturned out well. He impaled the tortoise on asharp stick and cooked it on site for a heartymeal. That’s the picture described by under-water archaeologists who more than 12,000years later found the shell of the now extincttortoise species pierced by a stake on what isknown as the “27-meter ledge,” a shelf 90 ftbelow the present surface of Little SaltSpring. The tortoise, we have to remember,was killed on dry land that existed before thesite was later inundated and incorporatedinto the depths of the widening spring.

In John A. Gifford’s view, Little SaltSpring (8SO18) near North Port in SarasotaCounty, Florida, is one of the most signifi-cant archaeological sites in North America.Dr. Gifford, professor of marine affairs andpolicy at the University ofMiami’s Rosenstiel School ofMarine & Atmospheric Sci-ence, is also principal inves-tigator of the Little SaltSpring Underwater Archaeol-ogy Project. For more than aquarter century, the springhas given archaeologists tan-talizing glimpses into theworld of Paleoindian huntersand gatherers.

It’s an invariable law: Discoveries draw criticsThe impaled tortoise shell, one of the most important finds atthe spring, dates to 12,000 RCYBP (about 14,000 CALYBP). Thisremarkable artifact has also been highly contentious. Someresearchers doubt that the stake was actually used to kill thetortoise; the dating of the stake, they argue, is at odds withcalcium carbonate dates from the tortoise shell. Gifford, usingcollagen dating on the shell (a technique not available toresearchers in the 1970s when it was found), has determinedthat its age is commensurate with that earlier published for thestake in the 1979 edition of Science by underwater archaeolo-gist Carl C. J. Clausen.

Some critics also claim there was insufficient “direct contex-tual association” between the stake and the fate of the tortoise.

that Clausen’s report lacks clarity on the issue, he has evidenceto calm the debate. “I found a 16mm color film shot when thetortoise was excavated,” Gifford explains, “that shows the di-rect contextual association of the stake with the tortoise shell.”Convinced it was a real association, Gifford robustly defendsClausen’s published account. He plans to discuss the issue atthe March 2008 SAA meetings and will likely show the film too.

Artifacts pulled from the spring over the years include a7,000-year-old greenstone pendant, and a carved atlatl handle(spear thrower) believed to be from the Early Archaic (8,000 to9,000 years old). The spring also yielded four non-returningboomerangs that Gifford says are so rare they may be “the onlyfour in the world.” He frankly admits that researchers don’tknow what to make of them; lacking comparative artifacts, they

intoPaleo Florida

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January ■ 2008 9

can’t identify with certainty the function of the curved throwingsticks.

Sharpened wooden stakes, wooden digging sticks, humanbones, bones from such prehistoric megafauna as the giantground sloth, and a curiouslysparse collection of arrowheadsand non-diagnostic lithics cramlaboratory storage bins. “Mind-boggling,” Gifford says of the finds. Re-corded dates from the artifacts show long-term,continuous occupation of the site. Moreover, the spring isassociated with an early- to middle-Archaic-period burialground containing possibly hundreds of bodies and is near anArchaic village site—opening a wide range of research possi-bilities.

Submarine archaeology, the way of science in FloridaUnderwater archaeology flourishes in Florida, which is dottedby more than 600 freshwater springs and several rivers wherePaleoindian artifacts also have been recovered (MT 19-4, “Div-ing into Florida Prehistory”; MT 18-4, “Rethinking Clovis Ori-gins: A Conversation with Michael Faught”; MT 12-2, “Un-derwater Site Opens Window on Big Environmental Change”;MT 10-1, “Underwater Site Details Mastodons’ Life History”;MT 3-2, “Florida Archaeologists Plunge Into the Past”).

Little Salt Spring was originally believed to be a shallow-water pond. In 1959 William Royal, a retired Air Force officer,began scuba diving there and discovered it to be an hourglass-shaped sinkhole nearly 80 m deep, typical of Florida’s karst

topography. Early researchers describe its surface as approxi-mately 78 m in diameter and about 5 m above sea level. Asinkhole is similar in many respects to the cenote found in theYucatán—a relatively shallow water-filled basin above a verti-cal underwater cavern (MT 20-3, “Early Humans South of theBorder: New Finds from the Yucatán Peninsula”). In a sink-

hole, deep vents at the cavern bottom feed oxygen-depletedground water, producing an anoxic environment below a depthof about 3 m. Bacteria necessary for decomposition are pre-vented from forming, thus creating an ideal environment forpreserving Paleoindian artifacts as well as fossil bones of ex-

tinct Florida megafauna. “We have extraordinarilygood preservation because there is almost no dis-solved oxygen in the water,” Gifford says. “Wedon’t have 100 percent preservation, but we have60 to 70 percent preservation, and that’s great.”

Hard-won fame for a challenging siteAs a graduate student in the 1970s, Giffordheard of archaeological discoveries beingmade at the spring. It was about the timewhen the property owners, the General De-velopment Foundation, hired Clausen,then the Florida State Archaeologist, to di-rect the Little Salt Spring Research Facility.

Thus began an intensive era of company-financed academic research there. Clausen

made many of the earliest finds at the springand set the stage for Gifford’s later study.

Clausen’s years of research at the spring convinced him ofthe overall importance of the site to understanding Paleoindianlife. “Unique cultural evidence,” he writes, “especially artifactsof wood, bone and shell, which seldom survive in the South-east, has been preserved in what can be described as a naturaltime capsule at Little Salt Spring.” The site has yielded evi-

dence among the earliest of human activity in Florida,their association with an extinct vertebrate in the

Southeast, and evidence that they preyedon an extinct species of giant tortoise. (Theevidence of early human presence at LittleSalt Spring is supported by the discoverybelow the Aucilla River surface of an Ameri-can mastodon tusk bearing cutmarks. Thetusk has been dated to 12,425 ± 35 RCYBP.)Clausen determined that humans occupiedthe site between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago,and again between 6,800 and 5,200 years ago.Gifford emphasizes that his research confirms

St. Petersburg

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Tallahassee

Jacksonville

Digital photomosaic, made from five35mm color slides taken underwater inDecember 1975, shows the stake in directassociation with the tortoise (the plates arethe shattered plastron) in the excavationtrench on the 27-meter ledge.

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Clausen’s conclusions concerning the site’s occupational datesand archaeological significance.

State and federal officials in 1979 placed Little Salt Spring onthe National Register of Historic Places, thereby confirmingthe site’s research potential. In 1982, the General DevelopmentFoundation donated the site to Miami University. The univer-sity in 1983 hired Gifford to direct the present Little Salt SpringProject. Unfortunately they didn’t hand him a pot of money, the

10 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

Gifford (right) describes late-Paleoindian wooden artifacts

recovered from Little SaltSpring basin excavations to a

local newspaper reporter.

Late-Paleoindian (ca. 9250 RCYBP) deerantler artifact of unknown function

recovered from Little Salt Spring.

Middle-Archaic greenstone pendant fromthe east slope of the Little Salt Spring basin,

ca. 6000–7000 RCYBP.

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mother’s milk of archaeology.He admits that finding moneyto continue research has beendifficult. Conducting underwa-ter archaeology is expen-sive—about 10 times morecostly than terrestrial archae-ology. A lack of funds cur-tailed research at the sitebetween 1982 and 1992, butmoney has gradually sur-faced. The University of Mi-ami and other donors fund activities, including underwaterarchaeological field schools up to three weeks in duration thatGifford has conducted since 1993.

The hard way to do businessGifford’s underwater work is time-consuming and equipment-intensive. Working conditions in the field are quite differentfrom those faced by terrestrial archaeologists. A 2007 featurestory in the Tampa Tri-bune recounts a typicalunderwater session: Af-ter wriggling into scubagear and tanks, re-search divers cross apontoon bridge onto afloating platform at thespring. From there,they plunge throughupper level aquarium-like swarms of smallfish and turtles to

of non-native greenstonethat possibly came as atrade item from the Appa-lachian region, the sus-pected source of thegreenstone. His team hasalso found a second green-stone pendant, which hasyet to be identified andsourced, and a series ofpointed wooden stakes ex-cavated from about 35 ftbelow the water, one ofwhich has been dated at9350 ± 90 RCYBP (Beta-216035), about 10,500CALYBP. Gifford is confi-dent the stakes were

driven into sediments at the drop-off above the water’s surfaceduring the late paleo period. He suspects that the stakes servedas anchor points for lowering objects, perhaps people, over theedge and down into the throat of the spring to the water’ssurface, which at that time may have been 20 ft below the level ofthe stakes, or about 55 ft below the present surface of the spring.

Not only have money problems eased since Gifford took overresearch at Little Salt Spring, help of a non-financial nature

appeared in the person of 26 divers with the Flor-ida Aquarium, boasting more than 1,000 hours’combined diving experience, who have partici-pated for the past three years. The Aquarium alsoplans to exhibit some of the artifacts recovered byGifford’s team. The restored tortoise shell andstake have been on public display at the Museumof Florida History in Tallahassee.

Meanwhile, Gifford’s field school students haveopened three 2-by-2-m underwater test excava-tions. “Actually,” he explains, “we are still workingon one of them because we have not yet hit bed-

rock.” The process gobblestime, and sometimes diverssurface empty-handed. Prog-ress can be maddeninglyslow: In a 2-week field seasonin 2007, it took one week justto excavate a 10-cm-deeplevel. However, with the ex-cavation now coming ontonew sediments, the potentialis promising. Divers haven’tyet hit bedrock, furtherbuoying Gifford’s hopes fornew finds.

Gearing up for the jobOther benefits, too, accrue from work at the site. Researchersare perfecting new techniques for recording excavations. Totake the place of still photography and sketching artistry usedby their terrestrial counterparts, Gifford and his fellow re-

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deeper excavation sites. Using an underwatervacuum powered by a pool pump, divers clearspecific areas, working from a suspended tram-poline secured by plastic pipe to hold equip-ment and collected artifacts. Excavation moveswith tortoise-like slowness, with divers frequently measuringminute progress in weeks. Gradually, though, the spring yieldsa few more of its secrets.

“Much of the work we have done has complementedClausen’s work,” Gifford says. After more than a decade,Gifford’s research has yielded more wooden tools and a pendant

January ■ 2008 11

searchers create digital video mosaics of the excavation. Theprocess saves time in their underwater time-pressured envi-ronment and produces more detailed results than traditionalmethods. Gifford has amassed a large database of digitizedrecords that can be quickly and easily expanded, used, andshared with other researchers.

Excited about finds at the site to date, Gifford is eager totake the next major step. Hissights are set on the 27-meterledge. Only 5 percent of thisnatural re-entrant has beenexplored, and Gifford be-lieves it has the greatest po-tential for extremely old finds.Exploring it, however, will bea particularly expensive ven-ture, requiring specializedequipment and an exotic mix-ture of breathing gases fordivers that includes helium,nitrogen, and oxygen. The op-timum breathing mixture al-lows divers to stay at the 90-ftdepth for 50 to 60 minutes inthe morning and the after-noon, a marked increase over20 minutes of bottom timelimited by the standard com-pressed-air breathing mix-ture—which also requires alengthy decompression timeand involves added health risks. More bottom time meansmore opportunity to make discoveries.

Data with an unsettling edgeLittle Salt Spring has opened a window on Paleoindian life. Thesite also has given researchers a yardstick for measuringclimate change, and the data reveal a fact that may bode a bleakfuture for human habitation of south Florida.

At the nub is how to explain the fact that no cultural remainsyounger than 5,500 years have been found in the sinkhole. Thisissue has puzzled researchers for years because it suggestshuman occupants suddenly abandoned the site. The prevailingwisdom, whose adherents included Clausen, theorizes that theexodus was the result of climate change, perhaps because thearea around the spring became more arid and therefore lesshabitable, or perhaps because burgeoning water supplies else-where, caused by climate warming and glacier melt, luredpeople away from Little Salt Spring.

Gifford’s team, however, offers an alternate hypothesisthat suggests the site bears witness to an ancient event hos-tile to humans. In a study presented in the 2005 edition of thejournal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,Carlos A. Alvarez Zarikian (a graduate student of Gifford’s),Gifford, and others examine fossilized organisms known asostrocods found in Little Salt Spring. They conclude thatincreases in saltwater, as glaciers melted and sea levels rose,may have degraded the water quality at the spring and forced

humans to seek habitation elsewhere. Their study is a cau-tionary tale of what may lie in store for Florida if globalwarming causes a rise in sea level as predicted. “I have seena number of predictions,” Gifford remarks, “and it doesn’tlook good for south Florida.” His primary concern, however,is uncovering the lives of past occupants around the spring.

Although Gifford concedes that we may never know forcertain what caused people to vacate thespring, he is confident that continuing paleo-environmental research will more clearly de-fine the chain of events taking place at whathad once been, without question, a scarceoasis and valued hunting ground for a very

Underwater photo, taken in March 2006,of a partially excavated oak stake in situat a depth of about 12 m. Since theupper portion of this stake, like all theothers, is missing, its original length isunknown. This stake has been dated to9350 ± 90 RCYBP, or 10750–10260 CALYBP(2-sigma). Gifford admits that “we stilldon’t know why these stakes were beingdriven into the soft sediment just abovethe drop-off.” Clausen’s theory is thatthey were “belaying pins” to secureropes used to lower something to thewater’s surface, which 10,000 years agowould have been a few meters belowthe drop-off.

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long time. It most certainly should produce more artifacts toexamine.

“I think we have the potential for finding very old, and verywell preserved, material,” Gifford says. “We certainly have anuntapped reservoir of material to explore here.”

–George Wisner

How to contact the principal of this article:John A. GiffordRosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric ScienceUniversity of Miami4600 Rickenbacker CausewayMiami, FL 33149e-mail: jgifford@rsmas.miami.edu

Suggested ReadingsClausen, C. J., A. D. Cohen, C. Emiliani, J. A. Holman, and J. J.

Stipp 1979 “Little Salt Spring, Florida: A Unique UnderwaterSite.” In Science, 203:609–14.

Kornake, S. 2007 “Deep in Florida’s Past: The Artifacts in LittleSalt Spring Could Help Rewrite History.” Tampa Tribune, MetroSection, Monday, July 2.

Zarikian, C. A. A., P. K. Swart, J. A. Gifford, and P. L. Blackwelder 2005“Holocene Paleohydrology of Little Salt Spring, Florida, Based onOstracod Assemblages and Stable Isotopes.” In Palaeogeography,Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 225:134–156.

12 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

NEARTHING A BROKEN mammoth leg bone is sure tomake an archaeologist’s eyes light up, especially if thebone shows evidence of spiral fracturing. There just

detour in the tortuous journey from discovery to recognitionthat dragged on for more than 20 years.

The skeleton of a mammoth, eroding out of the bank of thereservoir, was noticed by a local resident in 1969 when thewater level had fallen. Excitement was intense at finding anearly complete skull and skeleton because the skull was lyingupside down and many bones appeared to have been stackedas though by orderly workers. Enthusiasm turned to disap-pointment, however, when a consulting geologist identified thered fill surrounding the skeleton as Loveland loess of Illinoian

age. Since the mammoth at deathwould therefore predate humanpresence in North America by

nearly 90,000 years, the skeleton wasabandoned by archaeologists. It wasagain covered by rising reservoir water

and lay submerged for 22 years.Interest was sparked anew in

1989, when excavations at theEckles Clovis site 800 m from themammoth revealed that much ofthe terrace fill along the shore—and possibly including the fillsurrounding the mammoth—was much younger thanIllinoian material. A drought in

1991 again lowered the water level and gave investigatorsanother chance to examine the mammoth. Excavations thatyear yielded many pieces of spirally fractured and flaked adultmammoth limb bone in in situ beach silt. Not only had the bonebeen fragmented when green, one bone artifact bore polishfrom use wear. Considering the presence of the nearby Ecklessite, the investigators at first assumed the skeleton dated toClovis times, about 11,000 RCYBP. That was before a fragmentof limb bone notched by impact returned a radiocarbon date of18,250 ± 90 RCYBP!

Excavating the Lovewell mammoth Iin 1969. Note the nearly complete

skull, large limb, and ribs.

Early MammothBone Flaking

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on theGreat Plains

Uaren’t many natural agents that can break an adult mammothfemur or tibia, and a spiral fracture is proof the bone wasbroken when green, most likely by humans pillaging a freshcarcass for nutritious marrow or quarrying the skeleton fortoolstock. For Steve Holen, Curator of Archaeology of theDenver Museum of Nature & Science, spirally fracturedmammoth limb bones and worked flakes of bone found atthe Lovewell Reservoir site inKansas and the La Sena site inNebraska are unmistakable evi-dence of human scavengers, whomay also have been mammothhunters.

The significance of these discov-eries, impressive enough if they datedto Clovis times, is explosive: Thebones and their associated soil hori-zons date to earlier than 18,000 radio-carbon years before present, 7,000radiocarbon years before Clovis. Dr.Holen believes he has found evidenceof human activity in the centralGreat Plains during the Last Gla-cial Maximum (LGM)—and he may have added a big gun tothe armory of pre-Clovis research.

New finds on the prolific high prairieThe area where Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas meet hasyielded a wealth of mammoth remains over the years, some ofthem bearing evidence of Clovis butchering and bone quarry-ing. In fact, human handiwork detected on mammoth remainsfound at the Lovewell Reservoir site in northern Kansas wasidentified for a time as Clovis in origin. But that was just one

Scottsbluff

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★Shaffert ★

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January ■ 2008 13

Recurring droughts in 2002 and 2004 lowered the water leveland made it possible to retrieve more broken and flaked bone.Investigators were finally able to make sense of the geologywhen they recovered a rib fragment from red silts 80 m from the1991 and 2002 excavations, which dated to 20,430 ± 300 RCYBP.They realized this was the same silt (from younger GilmanCanyon Formation deposits) that had been mis-takenly identified because of its color asLoveland loess in 1969. Finally, in 2005 theydetermined that two mammoth skeletons hadbeen discovered at Lovewell Reservoir, the oneuncovered in 1969 and subsequently referred toas mammoth I (which yielded the date of 20,430± 300 RCYBP), and the one from which bones andartifacts were recov-ered in the 1991–2004excavations, subse-quently referred to asmammoth II (whichdated to 18,250 ± 90RCYBP, as mentionedabove).

Almost 700 piecesof bone have been re-covered from mam-moth II. A piece of cortical bone recovered in 2002 was dated byStafford Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, at 19,350 ± 80 RCYBP;Holen considers this more reliable than the earlier date of18,250 ± 90 RCYBP because this date was run nearly 10 yearsafter the first one and Dr. Tom Stafford’s methods in collagenpurification had progressed significantly during this period.

Broken by humans or natural causes?Holen, anticipating protests from fellow scientists that the boneshad been broken by natural forces and not by human action,especially since no stone tools were found with the mammoth

buried under 10 m of loess only two mammoth bones—bothribs—were broken by sediment loading.)

Could the breakage be attributed to animal trampling orgnawing? Not according to renowned European archaeologistand taphonomist Dr. Paola Villa, who examined the bones in2005 and found them all “very robust, not brittle and resistant

to breakage,” and in agood state of preserva-tion. “I have seen no cut-marks,” she writes, “andno gnaw marks (i.e., noragged edges, no grooves,no scooping of cancellousbone, no tooth puncturesor tooth pits).”

All the evidence weighsin on Holen’s side of theargument: These bones

Spirally fractured limb bone of the La Senamammoth, the largest piece recovered.

Refitted pieces of fractured femur of the La Senamammoth. Spiral fractures radiate from the dynamicloading point. The arrow points to a cone flake.

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were broken by people who walked the Plains with mammoths8,000 years before Clovis.

Support from the La Sena siteThe evidence from the single mammoth found in southernNebraska is just as intriguing as that from the Lovewell mam-moths. At the La Sena site the completely disarticulated skeletalremains of an adult male mammoth, scattered over an area ofmore than 200 m2, were excavated from a depth of 3½ m. (Ofnearly 10 m of late-Wisconsin loess that had once covered theskeleton, about 6 m was removed by Holocene erosion.) Bone

dynamicloading point

longitudinalfracture

fracture deflectedat epiphysis

epiphysisremoved

anvilcurvilinear

fracture

cortex

A limb bone consists of the shank (diaphysis) and a knobbyprojection on each end (epiphysis). These components,unjoined in a young animal, become fused (ankylosed) as theanimal matures. The tough shell (cortex) of the diaphysisencloses the marrow within the medullar cavity; the epiphy-ses, even in a mature animal, have a spongy (cancellous)consistency. Because of its high moisture content, the cortexof green bone is somewhat plastic (ductile is the termtaphonomists prefer). When the diaphysis is struck asufficiently violent blow, an impact crater is formed at thedynamic loading point, sometimes spattering small conicalflakes; tension and shear forces in the semi-rigid greencortex interact to produce characteristic curvilinear (spiral)fractures. Dry bone, on the other hand, is brittle and shattersinto pieces of irregular size and shape, like glass or pottery.

from the skeleton was radiocarbon-dated at 18,440 ± 145RCYBP. The skeletal elements are only slightly weathered,meaning they had been rapidly buried by the windblown loess.

Although investigators couldn’t find evidence of butcheringor stone tools associated with the remains, it was the wide-

remains, plays devil’s advocate to his own case. Rebutting theargument that the limb bones may have been broken by theweight of overlying sediments, he points out root etching on thebones that confirms their shallow burial. (In the case of the LaSena remains discussed below, even though they were once

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14 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

spread damage to the bones themselves that caught theirattention. Both femurs had been heavily broken, sheddingspirally fractured fragments. Dynamic loading points (areas oflocalized damage caused by violent blows by a stone or similarmassive object) were found on both femurs. The much lighter

are therefore more susceptible to breaking. In the instance of atypical isolated single-animal death, like that of the mammothsHolen is studying, Haynes confirms that trampling and kicking“rarely affect bones as severely as around water sources.” Hisfindings are confirmed by Dr. Diana Crader, whose studies

of seven deaths ofsingle adult ele-phants, even somethat occurred close

to streams, didn’trecord a single instance of

trampling damage.Studies of African elephants also

eliminate gnawing scavengers as possibleagents of limb-bone damage to Holen’s mammoths.

Hyenas and lions are capable of breaking the bones of prey aslarge as 1,000 kg (wildebeest, zebra, and buffalo, for example).When feeding on elephants, though, hyenas can only fracturetheir limb bones, Haynes points out, “after first eating epiphy-ses, then grasping the remaining shaft with jaws and leveringoff large pieces of compact bones.” Moreover, he notes that“long bone elements that do suffer breakage during carnivorefeeding are usually derived from still growing individuals,” inother words, from immature individuals whose epiphyseshaven’t yet fused. Holen argues that the epiphyses of thefemora of the La Sena mammoth (a fully mature animal, not ayoungster) are intact and that the fracture planes originate atmidshaft, the toughest part of the leg bone.

Were there gnawing carnivores in Pleistocene NorthAmerica capable of fracturing mammoth limb bones? The

most robust specimens roamingthe land were the American lionand dire wolf. Haynes concedesthat the sheer size of mammothlimb bones “probably presentedeven the largest and hungriestPleistocene scavengers withgnawing problems too formidableto allow fragmentation.” Authori-ties agree that even the giantshort-faced bear, Arctodus simus,should be dismissed as a candi-date capable of breaking a mam-moth leg bone. It was a fearsomebeast, even larger than today’sgrizzly, and demonstrated its pro-ficiency at cracking the bones of

large ungulates. Nevertheless, archaeologist Dr. EileenJohnson of Lubbock Lake Landmark argues that A. simuslacked the masticatory apparatus needed to break a mam-moth leg bone at midshaft, and Haynes considers hypotheti-cal gnawing by bears “a far-fetched explanation for theexistence of fragmented mammoth bones in any assem-blage.”

Elephants are handy to have aroundThe last mammoths, a dwarf species, died 4,000 years ago onWrangel Island, off Siberia. If a scientist wants to collect em-

This bone artifact was found when excavating theLovewell mammoth II in 1991. Now 3½ cm long,its tip had been broken and the fracturedend rounded with use. The root etching is

consistent with marks on other bonefragments of the skeleton; one was radio-carbon-dated at 19,530 + 80 RCYBP. Holen

describes this artifact in an article in CurrentResearch in the Pleistocene, vol. 13. STEVE HOLEN

fibula had been broken in two, and fractured fragments of limbbone were found intermixed with both intact and less heavilydamaged vertebrae and ribs.

Perhaps the most tantalizing specimen found at La Sena isa broken vertebra. Unlike the other vertebrae that were foundlying horizontally on the old soil surface, this element wasstanding upright, its lower surface buried 6 cm below the oldsoil surface. The upper surface had been broken, then wornsmooth, and alongside the vertebra investigators found acluster of spirally fractured fragments of limb bone. Theevidence suggests it served as an anvil for shattering legbones.

The issues of trampling and carnivore gnawingA wealth of research sup-ports Holen’s contention thatthe damage to the mammothskeletons at the LovewellReservoir and La Sena sites

The transverse process ofthis broken vertebra of the

La Sena mammoth lies6 cm below the originalground surface (dotted

line). It appears to haveserved as an anvil for

breaking leg bones.

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is indeed man-made and notthe result of natural forces.

Field studies by University of Nevada, Reno archaeologistGary Haynes at death sites of the mammoth’s closest livingrelative, the African elephant, verify that trampling of remainsby living elephants occurs infrequently and usually only if ananimal dies at a water hole. “Kicking and trampling are hit ormiss processes,” Dr. Haynes writes, “unless elephants returnin large numbers to the site seasonally, in which case bonesmay be widely scattered and broken.” Moreover, Haynes notesthat skeletons most liable to damage are those of youngeranimals whose epiphyses haven’t yet fused and whose bones

January ■ 2008 15

pirical data about mammoths, the next best subject to a livemammoth is a live African elephant. By observing today’selephants, farsighted scientists like Gary Haynes can glimpsevaluable clues about yesterday’s pro-boscideans.

The classic example of an el-ephant serving as a proxy for amammoth is the Ginsberg experi-ment, conducted in the winter of1977–78 by Smithsonian archaeolo-gist Dennis Stanford and interestedscholars, including Dr. RichardMorlan, archaeologist with the Ca-nadian Museum of Civilization, andDr. Rob Bonnichsen, founder anddirector of CSFA until his death in2004. Ginsberg was a 23-year-old fe-male African elephant that died inthe Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. AtDr. Stanford’s request, zoo curatorsagreed to transport the corpse tothe research station of the National

Zoological Park in Front Royal, Virginia. The aim of Stanfordand colleagues was to test whether a Clovis point couldpenetrate the thick hide of the elephant (and, by extension, of

a mammoth). It was also their chance to attempt tobutcher a mammoth-size corpse using Clovis tools.They were exhilarated, too, by the opportunity totest theories of pre-Clovis hunters, whose existencewas unproven at the time. Can a spear tipped withstone or bone bring down a mammoth? Using onlystone tools, is it possible to break the limb bone of amammoth? Can sharpened bone flakes function asbutchering knives?

Using replicas of Clovis points and biface tools,Stanford and his team were able to penetrate thehide and dismember bones. After they had exposeda leg bone, still attached to the carcass, it was timefor the moment everyone had been waiting for. “Aswe watched with anticipation,” Stanford recalls,“Robson Bonnichsen lifted a twenty-one-pound

Shaping BoneJust Like Stone

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LAKED BONES from the 2002 excavation of Lovewellmammoth II bear features remarkably similar to

B

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failed to initially detach during reduction.” Working with bonerequires remarkably little modification of techniques used toknap stone.

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Fknapped-chert artifacts: a striking platform, bulb of percus-sion, ripple marks, curved ventral surface, and hinge orfeather termination. Although taphonomy authority PaolaVilla cannot state with certainty that the flaked-bone speci-mens were used as tools, she confirms that the scars on theworked flakes were “apparently due to percussion flaking oftheir fractured edges, following the primary fracture.”

These two bone flakes from Lovewell mammoth II havebeen culturally modified using techniques quite similar tothose used to create lithic tools. The flake in A has a platform,bulb of percussion, and feather termination. Oriented asshown in the face on the left, the distal end and right lateralmargin have low-angled edges; the left lateral margin is blunt,with a 90-degree edge. “If this piece were a stone artifact,” saysHolen, “it could be classified as a naturally backed flake.”

The flake in B (dorsal face on the left, profile on the right)has a bulb of percussion, lines of force, and a feather termina-tion. Two small flakes (f1 and f2) were found still adhering tothe surface of the parent flake. The feather termination wassubsequently flaked from two directions, seen from scars onthe dorsal surface: f1 and three arrows, aligned longitudinally;and the single flake scar (f2) aligned laterally on the rightmargin. Holen remarks that “if these three objects were stone,they could be classified as a core with two refitted flakes that

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A bone flake from the La Sena mammoth,ca. 18,440 RCYBP.

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stone high overhead and threw it down onto the leg.” If youknew Rob, you remember him as 6 feet tall plus a little, andmuch stronger than his spare frame would have you believe.“The tough bone did not break,” Stanford reports. “Bonnich-sen tried again and again,and at last, on the fifthblow, the bone broke intothree pieces.”

This is eloquent testi-mony to the ruggednessand resistance to damageof a mammoth leg bone.It’s also vindication for ar-chaeologists who interpretspirally fractured mam-moth leg bones as irrefut-able proof of humanpresence. “We quickly ex-amined the spiral fracturesand the impact impres-sion,” says Stanford. “Theywere identical to thosepresent on the Dutton andSelby specimens” (mam-moth remains then underinvestigation at sites ineastern Colorado).

Using elephant bone astoolstock, the scientistsalso demonstrated that abone flake can be modifiedwithout a great deal of ef-fort into an effective knife,first by creating a flat strik-ing platform, then strikingthe platform with a softhammer (they used a ba-ton made of elk antler) toremove long thin flakesfrom the core. “The boneflakes were extremelysharp,” Stanford writes,“and with some effort func-tioned very well as cuttingtools.” They found that abone tool doesn’t hold anedge as well as a stone one;since a bone tool couldonly be resharpened bygrinding, a laborious pro-cess, it was easier just todiscard a dull tool andmake a new one.

For five days the scien-tists labored outdoors. “A light snow dusted the elephantcarcass,” Stanford remembers, “helping us imagine we wereIce Age hunters.” The Ginsberg experiment was a bone-chilling, gory exercise, made worthwhile because it proved in

Stanford’s view that “humans could have killed and butch-ered a mammoth largely without the aid of stone tools, andthat they could have controlled the flaking of mammoth boneas a raw material.”

Ginsberg revisitedHolen found the oppor-tunity to practice first-hand Ice Age techniquesfor quarrying bone of el-ephant qua mammoth insummer 2006. While heand his wife, Kathleen,were participating in aresearch project andfield school in Tanzania(not far from the Laetolisite, famous for the old-est known hominid foot-prints more than 3½million years old), theydiscovered the corpse ofa male elephant about 30years old. Although con-s e r v a t i o n - c o n s c i o u sTanzanian authoritieswill not permit elephantskeletal parts to leavethe country, they grantedHolen permission to de-tach a femur for on-siteexperiments.

To break the bone,Holen used a hafted 4.3-kg stone hammer. Just asBonnichsen had discov-ered 30 years earlier, notevery blow resulted in abreak. He reports that ef-fective blows created“impact points with nega-tive cones of percussion,cone flakes and radiatingspiral fractures of thetype present on bothfemora excavated at theLa Sena Mammoth Site.”Using ½-kg stone cob-bles as hard hammers,Holen detached flakesfrom spirally fracturedfragments that “exhib-ited prominent bulbs ofpercussion and had ei-

ther hinged or feathered terminations,” characteristics that“replicated those found in both the La Sena and the Lovewellmammoth bone assemblages.”

Q.E.D.

Project GinsbergBloody fingers hold material

struck from Ginsberg’s femur by ahammerstone to create a platformfor removing flakes, which werethen made into butchering tools.

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A flake struck from a core madefrom Ginsberg’s limb bone.

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The same flake (right) and the coreit was struck from, after being cleanedin the Smithsonian lab. The flake wasa very effective butchering tool. Boneknives actually sliced slightly frozenmeat more easily than thawed. SaysStanford, “We were impressed thatthe flaking quality of the fresh ele-phant bone was similar to stone,although it took more force to break.”He notes that bone, being less brittlethan stone, has the additional advan-tage of not breaking when subjectedto lateral stress: You can pry with abone tool, but not with one of stone.

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These two bone flakes mightappear to have been made by the

same toolmaker. The upper onewas made from Ginsberg’s legbone. The lower one is a speci-

men of worked mammoth bonefrom the Old Crow Basin in

Yukon, ca. 29,000 RCYBP.

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Holen (left) and AdamThomas fracture thefemur of the Tanzanianelephant using a haftedstone hammer.

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Suggested ReadingsHolen, S. R. 1996 The Lovewell Mammoth: A Late Wisconsin Site

in North-Central Kansas. Current Research in the Pleistocene,13:69–70.

——— 2006 Taphonomy of Two Last Glacial Maximum Mam-moth Sites in the Central Great Plains of North America: A Prelimi-nary Report on La Sena and Lovewell. Quaternary International,142–143:30–43.

The impact on First American studiesHolen is fully aware of the profound consequences of hiscontention that humans oc-cupied the Great Plains at thetime of the Last Glacial Maxi-mum. To accept his proposalthat mammoths and humanscoexisted in North Americafully 7,000 years beforeClovis requires a massiveshift in the center of gravityof Peopling of the Americastheories.

Until nearly the end of thelast century scientists be-lieved that an Ice-Free Corri-dor enabled the passage ofClovis-age migrants fromBeringia to North America,thence as far south as Tierradel Fuego. Their time-hon-ored paradigm was tatterednot only by discovery of theMonte Verde site in Chile and evidence of other human occupa-tions in the Americas that predate Clovis, but also by newdiscoveries that throw a shadow on the corridor. Dr. JamesBurns infers from radiocarbon dating of Pleistocene fauna incentral Alberta that anice sheet blocked hu-man passage into lowerNorth America fromabout 21,000 to 11,600RCYBP. Corroboratingevidence that glacialice blocked the pas-sage during the lateWisconsin comes fromstudies by Dr. LionelJackson, Jr. and col-leagues of cosmogenicchlorine dates on gla-cial erratics.

With the existenceof a traversable Ice-Free Corridor reducedto an untenably narrowwindow of time, scien-tists are exploring al-ternative routes to the

Western Hemisphere by Asian emigrants. Proponents of thecoastal-entry theory are searching for evidence that boat

people settled the PacificCoast; among them areDaryl Fedje, who is dredg-ing submarine sites alongthe Queen Charlotte Islandsof Canada; E. James Dixonin On Your Knees Cave,Prince of Wales Island inAlaska (MT 20-4, “E.James Dixon and the Peo-pling of the New World”);Roberta Hall and LorenDavis along the Oregoncoast (MT 22-1, “Late-

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Kathleen and Steve Holen inTanzania with Parkepu, ayoung Maasai, who was justheading off to college to earna degree so that he would bebetter able to help his people.Kathe, a Nurse Practitioner, isan avocational archaeologist.In October she presented herfirst professional archaeologi-cal conference paper on abeveled bone rod from theLindenmeier site in Colorado.

——— 2007 The Age and Taphonomy of Mammoths at LovewellReservoir, Jewell County, Kansas, USA. Quaternary International,169–170:51–63.

Stanford, D., R. Bonnichsen, and R. E. Morlan 1981 The GinsbergExperiment: Modern and Prehistoric Evidence of a Bone-FlakingTechnology. Science, 212:438–40.

Stanford, D. 1987 The Ginsberg Experiment. Natural History,9:10–14.

Pleistocene Occupations on the Oregon Coast”), and AlanBryan and Ruth Gruhn in Baja California (MT 17-2, “The BajaConnection”).

Some scientists propose theories of migration that don’tdepend on travel by foot or boat fromAsia. Stanford and colleague BruceBradley adhere to their Solutreanmigration theory, which envisionsEuropean boat travelers crossing theAtlantic Ocean (MT 17-1, “Immi-grants from the Other Side?”). Ar-gentinian scholar Augusto Cardich,

18 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

drawing on similarities in primitive rock art found in Australiaand Patagonia, makes a cognitive leap and proposes that boatpeople skirted the Southern ice shelf and crossed the SouthAtlantic (MT 16-2, “The First Americans: Were TheyAustralians?”).

Holen doesn’t advocate abandoning the classic theory thatAsians crossed the Bering Ice Bridge on foot and populatedNorth America as far south as Mexico. Instead, the presenceof humans on the Great Plains at the time of the LGM suggeststo him that their forebears crossed from Asia before the Ice-Free Corridor was closed. The evidence, he says, “suggeststhat a steppe-adapted Upper Paleolithic population migratedoverland from Siberia to Beringia and then southward into theGreat Plains sometime between 21,000 and 40,000 RCYBP,before glaciation in Canada closed the migration route.”

Support for this theory, he is quick to point out, isn’tlimited just to the evidence of pre-Clovis man-made bonebreaks at the Lovewell Reservoir and La Sena sites. He citesdiscoveries in the Yukon: similar mammoth-bone flakingfound at the Old Crow Basin in northern Yukon dating to25,000–40,000 RCYBP; and cutmarks from stone tools found onbison bones dating to 36,500 and 42,000 RCYBP. Holen re-

minds us that his fellow scientist Richard Morlan, who died lastJanuary (MT 22-2, “In Memoriam: Richard E. Morlan”), re-marked that evidence from the Yukon has never been ad-equately refuted. “The hypothesis that humans were in easternBeringia by 40,000 RCYBP has not been falsified,” says Holen,paraphrasing Morlan. “Instead it is generally ignored in theliterature.”

Steve Holen is raising our level of awareness.–JMC

How to contact the principals of this article:Steven HolenDepartment of AnthropologyDenver Museum of Nature & ScienceDenver, CO 80205e-mail: sholen@dmns.org

Dennis StanfordSmithsonian InstitutionMNH-304Washington, D.C. 20560e-mail: Stanford@si.edu

ment for sustaining these mammoths,” he says. “But theincreased volcanism also may have contributed to theirsurvival. We just don’t know.”

Although scientists haven’t determined exactly whenmammoths on the Pribilofs became extinct, Yesner specu-lates it might have occurred around the time when polarbears arrived.

Collected bone specimens have given researchers mate-rial for ancient-DNA analysis, which may answer questionsrelated to mammoth and polar bear evolution. Yesner is con-fident the studies, soon to be underway, will paint a morecomplete picture of the animals at Qagna Cave and theirenvironment.

–George Wisner

This caribou mandible is typical of many well-preserved animal bones that lay on the cave floor.

Suggested ReadingsAgenbroad, L. D., and D. P. Morris 1998 “Giant Island/Pygmy

Mammoths: The Late Pleistocene Prehistory of Channel IslandsNational Park.” National Park Service Web site www.nature.nps.gov//geology/paleontology/pub/grd4/chis.doc

Yesner, D. R., D. W. Veltre, K. J. Crossen, and R. W. Graham 2005“5,700-year-old Mammoth Remains from Qagna Cave, PribilofIslands, Alaska.” In The World of Elephants, edited by L. D.Agenbroad and R. L. Symington, pp. 200–04. Mammoth ScientificPapers No. 4, Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, S.D.

Pribilof Islands Mammoths

continued from page 7

How to contact the principals of this article:Kristine J. CrossenDepartment of Geological Sciences, BMH 212University of Alaska AnchorageAnchorage, Alaska 99508e-mail: afkjc@uaa.alaska.edu

Douglas W. VeltreDepartment of Anthropology, BMH 212University of Alaska AnchorageAnchorage, Alaska 99508e-mail: afdwv@uaa.alaska.edu

David R. YesnerDepartment of Anthropology, BMH 212University of Alaska AnchorageAnchorage, Alaska 99508e-mail: afdry@uaa.alaska.edu

January ■ 2008 19

Comets, meteors, asteroids, meteorites, supernovas—non-Comets, meteors, asteroids, meteorites, supernovas—non-Comets, meteors, asteroids, meteorites, supernovas—non-Comets, meteors, asteroids, meteorites, supernovas—non-Comets, meteors, asteroids, meteorites, supernovas—non-scientists among us have a hard time sorting out heavenlyscientists among us have a hard time sorting out heavenlyscientists among us have a hard time sorting out heavenlyscientists among us have a hard time sorting out heavenlyscientists among us have a hard time sorting out heavenlybodies. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in the companion book to hisbodies. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in the companion book to hisbodies. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in the companion book to hisbodies. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in the companion book to hisbodies. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in the companion book to hisTV series TV series TV series TV series TV series Cosmos,Cosmos,Cosmos,Cosmos,Cosmos, tells how he once hit a communication snag tells how he once hit a communication snag tells how he once hit a communication snag tells how he once hit a communication snag tells how he once hit a communication snagwhen trying to explain to someone, What’s a comet?when trying to explain to someone, What’s a comet?when trying to explain to someone, What’s a comet?when trying to explain to someone, What’s a comet?when trying to explain to someone, What’s a comet?

He was a graduate student in 1957, on duty one night at theHe was a graduate student in 1957, on duty one night at theHe was a graduate student in 1957, on duty one night at theHe was a graduate student in 1957, on duty one night at theHe was a graduate student in 1957, on duty one night at theYerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago when theYerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago when theYerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago when theYerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago when theYerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago when thephone rang. When Sagan answered, the caller replied, “Lemmephone rang. When Sagan answered, the caller replied, “Lemmephone rang. When Sagan answered, the caller replied, “Lemmephone rang. When Sagan answered, the caller replied, “Lemmephone rang. When Sagan answered, the caller replied, “Lemmetalk to a shtrominer.”talk to a shtrominer.”talk to a shtrominer.”talk to a shtrominer.”talk to a shtrominer.”

The fellow was obviously quite soused. Sagan politely askedThe fellow was obviously quite soused. Sagan politely askedThe fellow was obviously quite soused. Sagan politely askedThe fellow was obviously quite soused. Sagan politely askedThe fellow was obviously quite soused. Sagan politely askedif he could help.if he could help.if he could help.if he could help.if he could help.

“Well,” said the caller, “see, we’re havin’ this garden party“Well,” said the caller, “see, we’re havin’ this garden party“Well,” said the caller, “see, we’re havin’ this garden party“Well,” said the caller, “see, we’re havin’ this garden party“Well,” said the caller, “see, we’re havin’ this garden partyout here in Wilmette, and there’s somethin’ in the sky. Theout here in Wilmette, and there’s somethin’ in the sky. Theout here in Wilmette, and there’s somethin’ in the sky. Theout here in Wilmette, and there’s somethin’ in the sky. Theout here in Wilmette, and there’s somethin’ in the sky. The

funny part is, though, if you look straight at it, it goes away. Butfunny part is, though, if you look straight at it, it goes away. Butfunny part is, though, if you look straight at it, it goes away. Butfunny part is, though, if you look straight at it, it goes away. Butfunny part is, though, if you look straight at it, it goes away. Butif you don’t look at it, there it is.”if you don’t look at it, there it is.”if you don’t look at it, there it is.”if you don’t look at it, there it is.”if you don’t look at it, there it is.”

Sagan thought it useless to try to explain that since the mostSagan thought it useless to try to explain that since the mostSagan thought it useless to try to explain that since the mostSagan thought it useless to try to explain that since the mostSagan thought it useless to try to explain that since the mostsensitive part of the retina lies outside the center of your field ofsensitive part of the retina lies outside the center of your field ofsensitive part of the retina lies outside the center of your field ofsensitive part of the retina lies outside the center of your field ofsensitive part of the retina lies outside the center of your field ofview, faint objects are best viewed by averting your visionview, faint objects are best viewed by averting your visionview, faint objects are best viewed by averting your visionview, faint objects are best viewed by averting your visionview, faint objects are best viewed by averting your visionslightly. He knew that a newly discovered comet called Arend-slightly. He knew that a newly discovered comet called Arend-slightly. He knew that a newly discovered comet called Arend-slightly. He knew that a newly discovered comet called Arend-slightly. He knew that a newly discovered comet called Arend-Roland was barely visible in the night sky at that time. So he toldRoland was barely visible in the night sky at that time. So he toldRoland was barely visible in the night sky at that time. So he toldRoland was barely visible in the night sky at that time. So he toldRoland was barely visible in the night sky at that time. So he toldthe caller he was probably looking at a comet.the caller he was probably looking at a comet.the caller he was probably looking at a comet.the caller he was probably looking at a comet.the caller he was probably looking at a comet.

After a long pause the caller asked, “Wash’ a comet?”After a long pause the caller asked, “Wash’ a comet?”After a long pause the caller asked, “Wash’ a comet?”After a long pause the caller asked, “Wash’ a comet?”After a long pause the caller asked, “Wash’ a comet?”Sagan replied, “A comet is a snowball one mile across.”Sagan replied, “A comet is a snowball one mile across.”Sagan replied, “A comet is a snowball one mile across.”Sagan replied, “A comet is a snowball one mile across.”Sagan replied, “A comet is a snowball one mile across.”After a longer pause the caller said, “Lemme talk to a After a longer pause the caller said, “Lemme talk to a After a longer pause the caller said, “Lemme talk to a After a longer pause the caller said, “Lemme talk to a After a longer pause the caller said, “Lemme talk to a realrealrealrealreal

shtrominer.”shtrominer.”shtrominer.”shtrominer.”shtrominer.”–Ed.–Ed.–Ed.–Ed.–Ed.

What’s a Comet?

backyard,” says West, who lives in Arizona. He obtained permis-sion from Vance Haynes to collect samples of the Clovis sedi-ments at Murray Springs,Arizona, and sure enough,they were loaded withmicrospherules. “That’s whenI got interested and really ex-panded the book. Rick Fire-stone agreed to come in as acoauthor, and I was in a posi-tion where I could fund theresearch.” Eventually theybuilt a team consisting ofchemists, physicists, archae-ologists, geologists, and vari-ous other specialists to helpthem evaluate the anomaly.

Research at BlackwaterDraw, New Mexico (theClovis type site), revealedthat the microspheruleswere present in the Clovissediments there as well. Since then, West and his team havefound microspherules and a suite of other markers in the YDhorizons of seven other Clovis and equivalent-age sites, in-cluding Chobot, Morley Drumlin, and Wally’s Beach (all inAlberta, Canada); Topper in South Carolina; Lommel in Bel-gium; Daisy Cave in California; and Lake Hind in Manitoba.(West notes that he first learned of the archaeological discov-eries of Anton and Maria Chobot of Buck Lake, Alberta, in MT16-1, “Finding Early Peoples in Alberta.”) They’ve alsotested sediments from a number of Carolina bays, ellipticaldepressions long suspected to be associated with an ET im-pact event. Not all the impact markers have been identified at

all the sites, but all sites present multiple markers at the YDboundary.

In addition to unusually high concentrations of micro-spherules (sometimes exceeding 2,000 times the normal back-ground level), they’ve identified enriched levels of iridium andnickel at some sites—typical markers of ET impacts. Also com-

mon are spongy carbon spherules, glass-like carbon, soot, and polycyclic aro-matic hydrocarbons, all evidence ofhigh-temperature fires; Haynes’s blackmats; and, at four sites, carbon fuller-enes containing demonstrably extra-terrestrial helium. At 12 Clovis-age sitesin 5 countries on 2 continents, they alsofound microscopic nanodiamonds,

The Clovis Comet

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Magnetic microspherules observedin YD sediments at Murray Springs inArizona, Chobot in Alberta, Gainey inMichigan, and Howard Bay in NorthCarolina. Scale is in microns.

Exterior (left) and latticeworkinterior of a typical carbon spherule,in this case from South Carolina. Scaleis in microns.

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20 Volume 23 ■ Number 1

which have exactly one known origin: ET impacts. That was theclincher. “At one point we looked at the possibility of majorvolcanism, but it just doesn’t fit all the data,” West says. “Novolcanic eruption produces nano-diamonds.” In his opinion, an extra-terrestrial impact remains the bestexplanation for the totality of theirfindings.

Al Goodyear, who also contrib-uted to the PNAS paper, agrees. Hebecame involved in the project in thespring of 2005, when West contacted

Allen West (left) and Al Goodyear(center) consulting with backhoe

operator John Thompson ofClariant Corporation at the Big

Pine Tree site (38AL143), onemile from the Topper site in

South Carolina.

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to come after Clovis. I examined the North Carolina and Virginiadata and found essentially the same thing.” Goodyear hypoth-esized that his results might indicate a widespread population

decline, possibly as aresult of the cata-strophic Clovis impactpostulated by AllenWest’s team. Cur-rently, he and Westare examining the datafor evidence of similarpatterns of populationdecline throughout theEast.

Reasonable doubtAlthough the jury’sstill out on the matter,the clues unearthed byWest and his teampoint toward a cata-

strophic impact at the end of the Clovis era. But what hap-pened, exactly? The details remain sketchy, but the culpritwas apparently a heavily fragmented multi-kilometer-sized

icy body, similar to but much largerthan the Tunguska impactor, whichexploded over the continental icesheet covering northeastern Can-ada. A cushion of ice 1 to 2 milesthick, after all, might explain why animpact crater associated with theevent hasn’t been found. WhileWest admits that the absence of acrater blunts the theory, he arguesthat the other evidence more thanmakes up for it. “We have more than14 lines of evidence that there was animpact,” he points out. “We tell thepeople who don’t believe this to pointto a single place in the geologicalrecord where all these markers occurthat isn’t considered an impact.”We’ll discuss the nature of the Clovis

event in more detail in Part II of thisseries, “What the Data Tell Us.”

–Floyd Largent

How to contact the principals of this article:Allen WestGeoScience ConsultingDewey, AZ 86327e-mail: Allen7633@aol.com

Albert GoodyearSouth Carolina Institute of Archaeology and AnthropologyUniversity of South CarolinaColumbia, SC 29208e-mail: goodyear@sc.edu

him about visiting Topper in order to sample the Clovis-agesediments there for ET markers. “I wasn’t exactly sure what hewanted at first,” Dr. Goodyear recalls, “but he explained that histeam was going aroundAmerica sampling sedi-ments from Clovis sites withgood context. He also ex-plained that if their theorywas right, they’d be able totell me and other Paleo-american researchers wherethe 12,900-year-old level wasin a site. For sites withoutcarbon for dating, thisseemed like a good benefit.”

Although Goodyear was alittle skeptical at first, he wassoon convinced. “Topper

C. Vance Haynes (front)and Allen West examin-ing the black mat at the

Murray Springs site inArizona.

produced the iridium,” he reports, “plus now they’re findingtrillions of nanodiamonds there.” In addition, he soon came torealize that his own research indicated that something odd washappening immediately post-Clovis. In fall 2005, he reevaluatedthe South Carolina Paleoindian Point Database in preparationfor that year’s Clovis in the Southeast Conference in Columbia,South Carolina, reclassifying Redstone fluted points that hadpreviously been identified as Clovis (Current Research in thePleistocene, vol. 23, “Recognizing the Redstone Fluted Point inthe South Carolina Paleoindian Point Database”). “When I fin-ished,” Goodyear explains, “I found that I had from 4 to 5 timesmore Clovis points than Redstones, the fluted-point type thought