Science News

Mammoth engraved on fossil may date from at least 13,000 year ago

Chemical and microscopic analyses conducted by Speakman's team indicate that both the bone and the mammoth etching are ancient. Anatomical details of the drawing match those of ancient mammoths, including a high-domed head and long forelimbs. The bone itself, which comes from a mammoth, mastodon or giant sloth, was found by an amateur fossil hunter near Vero Beach, Fla., not far from where remains of people and extinct animals (including mammoths) were unearthed a century ago.

Speakman's team does a "reasonable job" of showing that the engraving is not a forgery, says archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. But the find can't be dubbed the oldest art in the Americas without radiocarbon or other direct dating evidence, Meltzer says. Radiocarbon measures indicate that stones engraved with cross-hatched lines and other abstract patterns, previously found at two Texas sites, date to about 11,500 years ago.

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