September 20, 2014|By Ken Kaye, Sun Sentinel
About 14,000 years ago, modern humans roamed to South Florida and lived side by side with mammoths, mastodons and saber-tooth tigers.
That, at least, is what Florida Atlantic University scientists hope to prove by analyzing ancient DNA found at an archaeological dig in Vero Beach.
If they can confirm the age of some very brittle bones, it will fill a major gap in human history, said Greg O'Corry-Crowe, an FAU associate research professor. "It would imply that humans were on this continent much longer than originally thought," he said.
Officially called the Old Vero Man site, the dig is considered one of the most important archaeological finds in North America. A large number of animal and human bones were discovered there, providing a rare glimpse of the Florida landscape at the end of the last Ice Age.
The site was originally discovered in 1915 when a farming company dredging a relief canal spotted part of a human skull and 44 other bones from up to five individuals, male and female.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-09-20/news/fl-fau-ice-age-20140919_1_human-bones-ancient-dna-florida-atlantic-university
Mammoth engraving from Florida
Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Florida have announced the discovery of a bone fragment, approximately 13 000 years old, at Vero, Florida with an incised image of a mammoth or mastodon. This engraving is the oldest known example of Ice Age art to depict a proboscidean (the order of animals with trunks) in the Americas. The bone was discovered in Vero Beach, Florida by James Kennedy, an avocational fossil hunter, who collected the bone and later while cleaning the bone, discovered the engraving. Recognising its potential importance, Kennedy contacted scientists at the University of Florida and the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute and National Museum of Natural History.
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