by Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on exciting discoveries, scientific advances and more.
More than 20,000 years ago in what is now Argentina, some of the earliest people in the Americas encountered and butchered a giant armadillo-like creature with stone tools, according to a new study.
The discovery, inferred from cut marks on the ice age creature’s fossilized remains, is significant because it adds to a flurry of recent discoveries that suggest the Americas were settled much earlier than archaeologists first thought – perhaps more than 25,000 years ago.
“These animals are closely related to the armadillos that are still alive,” said study co-author Miguel Delgado, a researcher at the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires. The animals are known for their armored scales and ability to roll up into a ball when threatened.
“The specimen we found belongs to one of the smallest species (of an extinct type of armadillo called Neosclerocalyptus),” said Delgado, noting that it weighed about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) and its length 180 centimeters (almost 6 feet), including the tail.
A bulldozer revealed the fossilized vertebrae and pelvis of the animal, which was found on the banks of the Reconquista River near the city of Merlo in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.
Radiocarbon dates from the bones and bivalve shells found in the same layer of sediment showed the armadillo remains to be between 20,811 and 21,090 years old, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
The cuts were not immediately obvious, but the cleaning of the fossils revealed 32 linear marks. After careful analysis, the team did not rule out that the marks were made by rodents, carnivores that could prey on the animals or other factors such as trampling, Delgado said.
Instead, the team determined that the shape of the cut marks was consistent with those made by stone tools. The placement of the marks suggested that the animals were butchered for their meat with a sequence of deliberate cuts that targeted dense areas of the armadillo’s flesh, according to Delgado.
“The cut marks were not randomly distributed but focused on those skeletal elements that supported large muscle packs such as the pelvis and tail,” he said.
The authors provided “convincing evidence” that humans butchered the extinct armadillo 21,000 years ago, said paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner, a research scientist at the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington. DC.
“The authors have done an excellent job of demonstrating through qualitative and quantitative analyzes that the cut marks on the armadillo fossils were most likely made by humans,” Pobiner, who was not involved in the study, said via email.
Earliest people in America
When and how soon people first migrated to North and South America, the last places people left Africa and spread around the world, have long been debated by experts and are not well understood. yet.
Current estimates of the first inhabitants range from 13,000 years ago to more than 20,000 years ago, but the earliest archaeological evidence of the region’s settlement is scarce and often controversial.
The discovery of fossilized footprints pressed into mud 21,000 to 23,000 years ago in New Mexico, described in a study in September 2021, is the most definitive of a series of recent evidence that suggests the arrival of the first inhabitants much earlier than many scientists thought.
During that time, the planet was in the grip of the Last Glacial Maximum, a period 19,000 to 26,000 years ago when two massive ice sheets covered the northern third of North America, extending as far south as what is now California New York, Cincinnati and Des. Moines, Iowa.
A journey between Asia and Alaska – the most likely route – would have been impossible during that time due to the ice sheets, and the cold temperatures caused by the glacier masses, which meant that the people who made the footprints much earlier.
Along with three perforated giant sloth bones found in Brazil that archaeologists believe were used by humans as pendants 25,000 to 27,000 years ago, the butcher armadillo bones suggest that people were in South America a surprisingly long time ago.
The time when people first settled across the Americas, home to many now-extinct ice creatures, was a “very hotly debated topic,” Delgado said.
“Until recently, the traditional model indicated that humans entered the continent 16,000 years ago,” he said.
“Our findings, in conjunction with other evidence, suggest a distinct case for the first humans on the American continent, that is, the most likely date for the first human entry to have occurred between 21,000 and 25,000 years ago or even earlier.”
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
