Ancient humans may have butchered and eaten a giant armadillo-like creature around 20,000 years ago in what is now Argentina, according to a new study.
The discovery of the butchered bones adds to growing evidence that humans spread into the Americas much earlier than previously thought.
Late Period Pleistocene Ice sheets and glaciers covered much of the Earth during the last glacial maximum (129,000 to 11,700 years ago), and especially during the peak of the ice ages at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 20,000 years ago). The First Americans Arrived while traveling Overpass This path connected Siberia and Alaska 13,000 years ago, but archaeological sites discovered in the Americas over the past decade indicate that humans arrived in the region much earlier than that.
According to a new study published in the journal Neurology on Wednesday (July 17th) PLOS OneThe researchers announced that they had found cut marks on the glyptodont fossil. Neosclerocalyptus — A member of the extinct giant armadillo family. These distinctive bones, discovered in Argentina’s Pampean region, may be one of the earliest examples of human interaction with large animals in South America.
The incomplete animal’s skeleton, discovered on the banks of the Reconquista River outside Buenos Aires, included parts of a pelvis and tail, as well as part of a carapace (the bony plate that covers the top of the animal’s body). The researchers carbon-dated a fragment of the pelvic bone to between 21,090 and 20,811 years ago, which matches the geological age of the deposits in which the animal was found.
Related: How did humans first reach the Americas?
To determine whether the cuts were made by humans, the researchers photographed and 3D scanned the animal’s bones. Some of the cuts have a V-shaped cross section, which the team believes strongly suggests butchery was performed with stone tools. In total, the researchers counted 32 cuts on the animal’s bones. After using various statistical methods to quantitatively classify and compare the cuts, they concluded that the cut patterns could not have been random, meaning the cuts were made by humans using tools.
The team ruled out carnivores, whose teeth often have U-shaped marks, as a possible cause of the marks, or the natural weathering of animals’ bones after they died, given the significant evidence that the animals were buried quickly after death to prevent deterioration by weather and scavengers.
The researchers concluded that the location of cut marks on different parts of the body revealed a butchery sequence and suggested that ancient humans obtained, and possibly ate, large amounts of meat from the giant armadillo’s pelvic and tail muscles.
“Glyptodonts may have been targeted due to their body size (approximately 300kg). [660 pounds]) and the large muscle mass they have,” said a co-author of the study. Miguel Delgado“The researchers found that the fossils were similar to those found in the human genome, but they found that the fossils were similar to those found in the human genome,” said paleoanthropologist David Schneider of the National University of La Plata in Argentina in an email to Live Science.
The results of this study not only shed light on human-megafauna interactions, but also “pull the chronological framework for human presence and human-megafauna interactions approximately 6,000 years earlier than documented elsewhere in southern South America,” the authors write in their study.
Lauren DavisAn archaeologist at Oregon State University who was not involved in the study said in an email to Live Science that the authors’ forward-thinking approach to the study is commendable, but that further research is needed, especially since no human-made tools were found at the site.
“To support the claim that humans were present at this site around 21,000 years ago, it is necessary to determine the extent to which human butchery practices were similar to and distinct from the widespread natural processes that alter bone,” Davis said.
“A stronger link between the cut-marked fossil bones and the archaeological record needs to be established,” the researchers said, but they hope to achieve this soon.
“We haven’t found any tools yet, but it’s worth noting that we’ve only excavated a small part of the site, so there may be more evidence there, such as stone tools,” Delgado said.
