The bones of a mammoth and calf just lately uncovered in New Mexico present indicators of butchering, an thrilling discover that would assist refine estimates of when people first populated the Americas.

The specimens date to between 36,250 and 38,900 years in the past, in accordance with carbon courting evaluation of the bones’ collagen. The paleontological staff discovered blunt-force fractures on the bones. What seem like flake-knives comprised of mammoth bones and proof of a managed fireplace have been additionally at the positioning—indicators that people have been concerned in the mammoths’ demise. The staff’s analysis appeared final month in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

“It’s not a charismatic site with a beautiful skeleton laid out on its side,” mentioned Timothy Rowe, a paleontologist at The University of Texas at Austin and lead creator of the current paper, in a UT release. “It’s all busted up. But that’s what the story is.”

At first look, Rowe thought the bone pile seemed like a butchering web site. But with no complicated stone instruments close by—a telltale signal of humankind—he couldn’t make certain.

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But running CT scans on several samples from the site revealed 32 bone flakes with noticeable fractures that the team argued could not be explained by geological processes or scavenging. About half of the bone flakes had sharp edges suitable for cutting.

The CT scans also revealed that several of the mammoths’ ribs and vertebrae had punctures, invisible to the naked eye due to how bone-colored sediment filled them in. The team believes these punctures may have been to hasten the draining of grease from the bones.

“There really are only a couple efficient ways to skin a cat, so to speak,” Rowe said in the release. “The butchering patterns are quite characteristic.” (I can only assume that killing and butchering a mammoth required more effort than a cat.)

Besides the mammoth bones, the site also contained evidence of smaller burned animals: birds, rodents, lizards, and fish, despite the fact that the nearest river is 200 feet from the site. The condition of the burned remains indicates they were heated with a controlled fire, rather than flash lightning or other naturally induced fires, according to the researchers.

If all these clues are indeed the remnants of human activity, it would be yet another nail in the coffin for the old Clovis First theory, which held that the first people reached North American around 13,000 years ago. Last year, fossilized human footprints in New Mexico pushed back humankind’s presence in North America by 10,000 years. The newly discovered mammoth site is about 15,000 years older than those footprints. Previous analysis has urged that some indigenous Americans within the Amazon are extra genetically much like indigenous Australians and different teams in Oceania than to fashionable Native American populations, an indicator that a number of populations of people entered North America from Asia within the historical previous.

More: Footprints Suggest Humans Migrated Deep Into North America Earlier Than Previously Known