PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Texas A&M study: Hunters present at least 800 years earlier than previously thought

2011-10-22
(Press-News.org) COLLEGE STATION, Oct. 20, 2011 — The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming that the first inhabitants arrived earlier to North America than previously thought, says a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University archaeologist.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Colorado, Washington and Denmark believe the find at the Manis site in Washington demonstrates that humans were in the area around 13,800 years ago, or 800 years earlier than was believed. Their work is published in the current issue of Science magazine.

In the late 1970s, an adult male mastodon was excavated from a pond at the Manis site. The distribution of the bones and the discovery that some of the bones were broken suggested that the elephant had been killed and butchered by human hunters, Waters explains. However, no stone tools or weapons were found at the site. The key artifact from the site was what appeared to be a bone point sticking out of one of the ribs, but the artifact and the age of the site were disputed.

Waters contacted team member and original excavator, Carl Gustafson, about performing new tests on the rib with the bone point. New radiocarbon dates confirmed that the site was 13,800 years old. High resolution CT scanning and three-dimensional modeling confirmed that the embedded bone was a spear point, and DNA and bone protein analysis showed that the bone point was made of mastodon bone.

"The Manis site is an early kill site" Waters says.

"The evidence from the Manis site shows that people were hunting mastodons with bone weapons before the Clovis stone spear point."

The new evidence from Manis supports extinction theories of large mammals at the end of the last Ice Age, Waters says. During the last cold period, herds of mammoth, mastodon, camels, horses and other animals roamed Texas and North America. At the end of the Ice Age, these animals became extinct.

"While these animals were stressed by the changing climate and vegetation patterns at the end of the Ice Age, it is now clear from sites like Manis that humans were also hunting these animals and may have been a factor in their demise," Waters adds. He also notes that "there are at least two other pre-Clovis kill sites in Wisconsin where hunters killed mammoths."

'Clovis' is the name given to the distinctive tools made by people starting around 13,000 years ago. The Clovis people invented the 'Clovis point', a spear-shaped weapon made of stone that is found in Texas and the rest of the United States and northern Mexico. These weapons were used to hunt animals, including mammoths and mastodons, from 13,000 to 12,700 years ago.

Waters says that "the evidence from the Manis site is helping to reshape our understanding of the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, the last continent to be occupied by modern humans."

INFORMATION:

The study was funded by the North Star Archaeological Research Program at Texas A&M University.

About research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world's leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $630 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.

Media contact: Keith Randall, News & Information Services, at (979) 845-4644 or keith-randall@tamu.edu; or Mike Waters at (979) 845-5246 or mwaters@tamu.edu

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Podiatrist in Charlotte, NC Expedites Patients' First Visits

2011-10-22
Leading podiatrist in Charlotte, NC, Dr. Scott Basinger, continues to make receiving foot and ankle health care easier with advancements in information technology. Patients can now visit the practice's website to download, print and fill out new patient paperwork. A patient's first visit to Ankle & Foot Center of Charlotte establishes a vital foundation for the relationship between the patient and Dr. Basinger, treating foot pain in Charlotte, NC, and his staff members. During a patient's first visit, Ankle & Foot Center of Charlotte makes sure to obtain important ...

Calorie count plus points based on added sugars, sodium, and saturated and trans fats recommended as new front-of-package nutrition labeling system

2011-10-22
WASHINGTON — Federal agencies should develop a new nutrition rating system with symbols to display on the front of food and beverage packaging that graphically convey calorie counts by serving size and a "point" value showing whether the saturated and trans fats, sodium, and added sugars in the products are below threshold levels. This new front-of-package system should apply to all foods and beverages and replace any other symbols currently being used on the front of packaging, added the committee that wrote the report. "Our report offers a path to develop an Energy ...

Podiatrist in San Antonio Increases Foot Care Awareness Via Valuable Internet Social Media Sites

2011-10-22
Premier podiatrist in San Antonio, Dr. Ed Davis, embraces improving technology by creating new social media networks online for increased patient podiatric awareness. New social media sites - Facebook and Twitter - allow patients to easily gain valuable foot and ankle health care with just the click of a mouse. These social media channels were set up to maintain a superior level of communication and interaction with patients at any point during the day. Patients can now access more personalized information, as well as learn more about other patient's experiences with ...

Federal government releases environmental, health, and safety research strategy for nanotechnology

2011-10-22
The Federal Government today released a national strategy for ensuring that environmental, health, and safety research needs are fully identified and addressed in the fast-growing field of nanotechnology. The 2011 NNI Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Research Strategy provides an integrated research framework to guide all Federal agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the Federal Government's ten-year-old program for nurturing and coordinating the emerging science of nanotechnology. The research strategy will help the NNI leverage ...

Improved living environments can reduce health problems for women and children

2011-10-22
Low-income women with children who moved from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods experienced notable long-term improvements in aspects of their health; namely, reductions in diabetes and extreme obesity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago and partner institutions. The New England Journal of Medicine published the study in a special article today, "Neighborhoods, Obesity and Diabetes - A Randomized Social Experiment." Lead author for the collaboration was Jens Ludwig, the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, ...

Braverman Center for Health Journeys Opens in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

2011-10-22
Braverman Center for Health Journeys will celebrate their official opening on November 1, 2011. The Center specializes in medical health management, infertility counseling, third party reproduction and diabetes care. The Braverman Center offers a comprehensive program of support and education, helping individuals make better decisions, tolerate treatment better, develop good coping strategies and understand the course they will need to navigate. Being healthy involves the body, mind and emotions.A medical diagnosis is often scary and can overwhelm the strongest individual. ...

High to moderate levels of stress lead to higher mortality rate

2011-10-22
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study concludes that men who experience persistently moderate or high levels of stressful life events over a number of years have a 50 percent higher mortality rate. In general, the researchers found only a few protective factors against these higher levels of stress – people who self-reported that they had good health tended to live longer and married men also fared better. Moderate drinkers also lived longer than non-drinkers. "Being a teetotaler and a smoker were risk factors for mortality," said Carolyn Aldwin, lead author of the study and ...

Hospital patients suffer in shift shuffle

2011-10-22
Patient handovers have increased significantly as a result of the restrictions on the number of hours residents are allowed to work. Multiple shift changes, and resulting consecutive sign-outs, during patient handovers are linked to a decrease in both the amount and quality of information conveyed between residents, according to a new study by Dr. Adam Helms from the University of Virginia Healthsystem in the US and his colleagues. Their work¹, which characterizes the complex process of resident sign-out in a teaching hospital, appears online in the Journal of General ...

Compliance Safety Systems Partners with J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc. to Offer Drug and Alcohol Consortium Services to Carriers

2011-10-22
Compliance Safety Systems (CSS) proudly announced today that they have been selected by JB Hunt Transport Services, Inc. to offer drug and alcohol consortium services to carriers providing contracted services to J.B. Hunt. The CSS Consortium was established to assist carriers in complying with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations 49 CFR Part 382. Consortium services include annual certification, random selection and notification, certified drug testing laboratories, a Medical Review Officer, and semi-annual summary reports. Additionally, assistance with developing ...

Crater shapes explained, how carnivorous plants bite, and doubts about faster-than-light neutrinos

Crater shapes explained, how carnivorous plants bite, and doubts about faster-than-light neutrinos
2011-10-22
Grainy asteroids and the craters they leave behind F. Pacheco-Vazquez and J.C. Ruiz-Suarez Physical Review Letters (forthcoming) It's generally accepted that craters in the moons and planets were created by asteroid collisions. But, why are some craters completely flat while others show central peaks? New experiments involving projectiles made of globs of granular material appear to provide a solution to the long-standing mystery: loosely-packed projectiles completely spread after collision, leading to bowl-shaped craters, while tightly-packed globs give rise to central ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Final day of scientific sessions reveals critical insights for clinical practice at AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting and OTO EXPO

Social adversity and triple-negative breast cancer incidence among black women

Rapid vs standard induction to injectable extended-release buprenorphine

Galvanizing blood vessel cells to expand for organ transplantation

Common hospice medications linked to higher risk of death in people with dementia

SNU researchers develop innovative heating and cooling technology using ‘a single material’ to stay cool in summer and warm in winter without electricity

SNU researchers outline a roadmap for next-generation 2D semiconductor 'gate stack' technology

The fundamental traditional Chinese medicine constitution theory serves as a crucial basis for the development and application of food and medicine homology products

Outfoxed: New research reveals Australia’s rapid red fox invasion

SwRI’s Dr. Chris Thomas named AIAA Associate Fellow

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) funding for research on academic advising experiences of Division I Black/African American student-athletes at minority serving institutions

Johri developing artificial intelligence literacy among undergraduate engineering and technology students

Boston Children’s receives a $35 million donation to accelerate development of therapeutic options for children with brain disorders through the Rosamund Stone Zander and Hansjoerg Wyss Translational

Quantum crystals offer a blueprint for the future of computing and chemistry

Looking beyond speech recognition to evaluate cochlear implants

Tracking infectious disease spread via commuting pattern data

Underweight children cost the NHS as much per child as children with obesity, Oxford study finds.

Wetland plant-fungus combo cleans up ‘forever chemicals’ in a pilot study

Traditional Chinese medicine combined with peginterferon α-2b in chronic hepatitis B

APS and SPR honor Dr. Wendy K. Chung with the 2026 Mary Ellen Avery Neonatal Research Award

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) has launched the Variant Workbench

Yeast survives Martian conditions

Calcium could be key to solving stability issues in sodium-ion batteries

Can smoother surfaces prevent hydrogen embrittlement?

Heart rate changes predict depression treatment success with magnetic brain stimulation

Genetics pioneer transforms global depression research through multi-omics discoveries

MDMA psychiatric applications synthesized: Comprehensive review examines PTSD treatment and emerging therapeutic indications

Psychedelics offer new therapeutic framework for stress-related psychiatric disorders

Brain cell discoveries reshape understanding of psychiatric disorders

Mom’s voice boosts language-center development in preemies’ brains, study finds

[Press-News.org] Texas A&M study: Hunters present at least 800 years earlier than previously thought