2016/05/06 by Jessi J. Halligan, Michael R. Waters, Angelina G. Perrotti +9 · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600375
openalex publication_date 2016/05/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Stone tools and mastodon bones occur in an undisturbed geological context at the Page-Ladson site, Florida. Seventy-one radiocarbon ages show that ~14,550 calendar years ago (cal yr B.P.), people butchered or scavenged a mastodon next to a pond in a bedrock sinkhole within the Aucilla River. This occupation surface was buried by ~4 m of sediment during the late Pleistocene marine transgression, which also left the site submerged. Sporormiella and other proxy evidence from the sediments indicate that hunter-gatherers along the Gulf Coastal Plain coexisted with and utilized megafauna for ~2000 years before these animals became extinct at ~12,600 cal yr B.P. Page-Ladson expands our understanding of the earliest colonizers of the Americas and human-megafauna interaction before extinction.