There's only 5 explanations for the broken bones at the Cerutti mastodon site:>Carnivores breaking themNo carnivore in the environment was powerful enough to break a mastodon femur mid-shaft, and the patterns of breakage are consistent with percussion, not gnawing.>Animals trampling themTrampling from animals leaves a certain pattern which is absent from the site, plus a majority of the weaker bones aren't broken.>A flood breaking themGiven that there's no size, shape, or density separation of the bones and rocks, this precludes flooding being involved (small teeth that should be washed down stream a mile away are right next to entire tusks and heavy boulders). It also wouldn't make sense for a flood powerful enough to shatter rocks and break mastodon femurs to not also break the weaker bones.>Construction breaking themThis can't be for a few reasons, mainly because the bones were encased in a layer of unbroken pedogenic carbonate (If a machine broke the bones it would also break the pedogenic carbonate), and because shards of the bones were found far away from the bones themselves (which would be impossible for the shards to travel that far underground).Is there anything I'm missing? Doesn't this leave hominins as the only option, thus indisputably proving they were in the Americas at least 130K years ago?
>>17275955>No carnivore in the environment was powerful enough to break a mastodon femur mid-shaftYou don't know that, we keep discovering megafauna species or specimens in new ranges and it's hard to extrapolate how strong predators' jaws/beaks/etc were anyway>the patterns of breakage are consistent with percussion, not gnawing.very speculative given the state of the bones, and still doesn't exclude predation, for example a smart terror bird using rocks.That said, it's entirely possible early hominins reached North America before homo sapiens did. It'd just be surprising given they apparently left few traces/didn't have much impact on the ecosystem.
>>17275955I like science and so I had assumed that radio carbon dating was legit but as it turns out the ground is constantly shifting and changing and so it's all a bunch of bullshit and 50,000 year old stuff can easily find it's way into 50 million year old stuff given the chaos of the earth
>>17276091>You don't know that, we keep discovering megafauna species or specimens in new rangesOk, I should say no known carnivore is strong enough break a mastodon femur mid-shaft.>very speculative given the state of the bonesHow? I’m not an expert in analyzing bones, but they aren’t in a bad condition to my knowledge, and paleontologists/archeologists have analyzed bones much older.>and still doesn't exclude predation, for example a smart terror bird using rocks.Please tell me what bird can balance a giant mastodon femur on an anvil, and then pick up a big ass boulder and drop it on it (and has this been observed in any other site?)
>>17276155The site wasn’t radio carbon dated, it was dated with some uranium/thorium technique.
>>17275955>elephant falls down, breaks its leg and dies>this must be aliens or whateverneeds to cook more if you want to claim people did it
>>17276192First of all, it wasn't quite an adult-sized mammoth, though the bones remain massive.There were several types of enormous predatory/scavenger birds around paleolithic California, including teratorns like Aiolornis (wingspan of over 5 meters, other teratorns in south america were even larger) and flightless terror birds, the phorusrhacids (Titanis) and bathornithids (Paracrax), many of which were over 2 meters tall and (unlike the flying teratorns) weighted hundreds of kilos. Of course, there could have been any number of other megapredators we have yet to discover. We know almost nothing about the behavior of these birds that can't be directly deducted from their anatomy. However we have seen a wide variety of bird species dexterously and cleverly manipulate tools in order to break bones and shells. For example ossifrages are specialized in eating bones and have been observed dropping bones from heights onto jagged rocks, hammering bones into rocks with their beak, or harrassing/scaring animals into falling off cliffs onto the rocks below. Other birds are known to hammer shells with rocks, throw hard to crack nuts onto the road for cars to run them over and many other displays of cleverness involving sticks and stones. Of course plenty of other animals use stones as anvils and hammers (famously otters, who even carry rocks around for this purpose) Many tool-use behaviors are apparently unique (or were once thought unique) to particular species, and it was considered fantastical and unlikely that such animals would do that... until it was observed. For example it was discovered that some bears kill wallruses by throwing rocks at them, or that some eagles use sticks to gather sheep wool, or that badgers make and stack mud balls to use as stepladders.
>>17276392Which brings us to the other problem with eliminating possibilities due to absence of evidence. No, there is no site evidencing terror birds breaking bones like that. That's hardly a surprise, since well-preserved paleolithic sites are quite rare in the first place and as far as I know, there is no other site older than 15k years or so that features bones broken in this fashion anywhere in America. Whether you choose to believe it's the work of birds or humans or bigfoots, you're similarly stumped by the lack of corroborating evidence. In fact, the human hypothesis presents greater problems, because while a random animal might be expected to perform one or two tricks such as hammering things with rocks, humans are routinely capable of much more. Where are the crafted stone tools, the lithic technology that is characteristic of human presence at paleolithic sites? Where are the tools and artworks made from bone or ivory? (whatever butchered that mammoth did not bother to collect its tusks) Where are the traces of fire, pigments etc? Or more directly, where are the human corpses? You claimed "no carnivore in that environment was powerful enough" etc, but no humans were found in that environment either, so why are you quicker to discount one than the other? You're free to prefer one hypothesis to another, but you shouldn't apply different standards to reach a desired conclusion.
>>17275955>>A flood breaking themhe was caught in flash flood, crushed(when he was still alive(or dying) and in one piece) and then buried under sediments
>>17276392>There were several types of enormous predatory/scavenger birds around paleolithic California, including teratorns like AiolornisJust looking at their talons, there’s no way they could grip onto the stones enough to fly with it high in the air (assuming it can even lift that much).>and flightless terror birds, the phorusrhacids (Titanis) and bathornithids (Paracrax)The stones have to be hit on the bones with a lot of force, probably more than just dropping them from ~1.5 meters.>No, there is no site evidencing terror birds breaking bones like that. That's hardly a surprise, since well-preserved paleolithic sites are quite rare in the first placeThat actually is a surprise. Of all the sites we’ve ever discovered across North and South America (and beyond), it would be very odd if this is the only site where terror birds are observed with this behavior. This pattern of breakage with hammers and anvils nearby should be a known feature among sites if this was a behavior terror birds did.>Where are the crafted stone tools, the lithic technology that is characteristic of human presence at paleolithic sites? Where are the tools and artworks made from bone or ivory? (whatever butchered that mammoth did not bother to collect its tusks) Where are the traces of fire, pigments etc.It was a bone processing site, not a kill/butcher site. The idea is that some hominins found the mastodon dead and rotting, so they just broke open the bones for the marrow and for material to make tools.>You claimed "no carnivore in that environment was powerful enough" etc, but no humans were found in that environment either, so why are you quicker to discount one than the other?Because the evidence perfectly lines up with hominins, so to discount it you have to start inventing animals that haven’t even been discovered yet.
>>17275955bump
>>17278159good stuff.
