Bones of Mastodon Hint a Hunting Link
By LENA WILLIAMS
NEW YORK TIMES
PAGE 55
MAY 7, 1978
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POUND RIDGE, N. Y.—Robin Ward, a 26‐year‐old science student, was taking an afternoon stroll near her home here the other day when she spotted a huge white bone lying against a stone wall. Curious, she stooped down to examine it further, and her attention was caught by a sharp white object protruding from the soil. Using her hands as a shovel, Miss Ward pulled out an eight‐inch tooth.
“The bones were too large to be those of a dead farm animal,” Miss Ward said recently, recalling her initial reaction. “I had this feeling that the bones were of some significance.”
She later learned that the tooth and femur, or thigh bone, were those of a mastodon, the extinct elephant‐like animal that lived 15 million years ago in the eastern United States and southern Canada.
The mastodon fossils were found along a swampy waterfront in this northeastern Westchester County community, not far from where hunting artifacts of an Indian tribe that lived 10,000 years ago were recently discovered.
Some archeologists and curators believe the recent discoveries may provide the answer to an unproved theory that mastodons, which lived in North America until at least 9,000 years ago, were hunted by humans. Such a correlation, they said, would constitute a major archeological find…
For the balance of this lengthy NYT piece, click upon this LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/07/archives/bones-of-mastodon-hint-a-hunting-link-fossils-are-found-in.html
NEW YORK TIMES
PAGE 55
MAY 7, 1978
View page in TimesMachine
POUND RIDGE, N. Y.—Robin Ward, a 26‐year‐old science student, was taking an afternoon stroll near her home here the other day when she spotted a huge white bone lying against a stone wall. Curious, she stooped down to examine it further, and her attention was caught by a sharp white object protruding from the soil. Using her hands as a shovel, Miss Ward pulled out an eight‐inch tooth.
“The bones were too large to be those of a dead farm animal,” Miss Ward said recently, recalling her initial reaction. “I had this feeling that the bones were of some significance.”
She later learned that the tooth and femur, or thigh bone, were those of a mastodon, the extinct elephant‐like animal that lived 15 million years ago in the eastern United States and southern Canada.
The mastodon fossils were found along a swampy waterfront in this northeastern Westchester County community, not far from where hunting artifacts of an Indian tribe that lived 10,000 years ago were recently discovered.
Some archeologists and curators believe the recent discoveries may provide the answer to an unproved theory that mastodons, which lived in North America until at least 9,000 years ago, were hunted by humans. Such a correlation, they said, would constitute a major archeological find…
For the balance of this lengthy NYT piece, click upon this LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/07/archives/bones-of-mastodon-hint-a-hunting-link-fossils-are-found-in.html
