Skip to main content
Social Sci LibreTexts

6.11: The Cerutti Mastodon

  • Page ID
    6939
  • \( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \) \( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)\(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)\(\newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

    Wow! San Diego is on the map as a game changer in hominid evolution! Evidence that 130,000 years ago, someone cracked open the bones of mastodons with hammerstones.

    VISIT THE SAN DIEGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM'S EXHIBIT.

    Why were they breaking bones? To get to the marrow? To shape the bone into other tools? Who were they? Homo sapiens? A middle Pleistocene hominid? Homo erectus? We didn't find any remains of the people using the tools, so we wait on future discoveries. Most evidence points to the first settlement of the Americas reliably at 15,000 years ago, or possibly as old as 30,000. But this find is so much earlier, 130,000 years ago, it really is a game changer.


    This page titled 6.11: The Cerutti Mastodon is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Arnie Daniel Schoenberg via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.