2009/07/01 by Kenneth B. Tankersley, Michael R. Waters, Thomas W. Stafford · 2 citations
Environmental Science · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0002731600048757
openalex publication_date 2009/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Contemporaneity of people and the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, has been extensively debated for more than two hundred years. Newly interpreted stratigraphic excavations and direct AMS ¹⁴C measurements on mastodon bones from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, indicate that the megafauna are a palimpsest of fossils spanning at least 1,200 calendar years (11,020 ± 30 to 12,210 ± 35 RC yr B.P.). The radiocarbon evidence indicates that mastodons and Clovis people overlapped in time; however, other than one fossil with a possible cut mark and Clovis artifacts that are physically associated with but dispersed within the bone-bearing deposits, there is no incontrovertible evidence that humans hunted Mammut americanum at the site.