It look like we can addthe gomphothere , an root to the elephant , to the list of brute humans have driven nonextant . It was once thought that gomphothere had exit out before the first humans reached North America , but new evidence suggest it live long after humans arrived .
Not only have University of Arizona paleontologists find gomphothere bone recent enough to concur with human settlement , they found them unify in with weapons , indicating the prehistoric elephant were credibly dinner for the hunting watch .
Gomphotheres were as enceinte as modern elephants and dominated North America from 12 million years ago until going into decline around around 2 million years ago . They also flourished inAsia and South America . The cause of their demise has beenmuch debated . rivalry from more specialized feeders appears to have played a part , along withclimate change , but the main issue of public debate was whether human beings chip in .
This feeds a wider payoff . All over the world , aside from Africa , the latter part of theQuaternary Periodsaw most of the declamatory land animalsbecome extinct . Insome casesit is clear that humans , either as hunters or rivals , were responsible for . In others , the issueisnot settled . The debate is think to have importantimplications for the current hatful extinguishing .
Until relatively recently it was think that gomphotheres went extinct from North America and the northern part of South America long before humans arrived . Consequently , debate about our office in their death centered on areas that are nowArgentina and Chile . However , in 2011 human arm were find in association with gomphothere bonesin Columbia . Now a like breakthrough has been made in Mexico .
In 2007 rangers in northwestern Sonora inform Professor Vance Holliday of some very great fogy . “ At first , just based on the size of it of the bone , we thought perchance it was a bison , because the extinct bison were a little bigger than our innovative bison , " articulate Holliday . However , the discovery of a jawbone made clear that they were dealing with gomphothere stiff . In theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthe bones are revealed as 13,400 years old .
Joaquin Arroyo - Cabrales / Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia . The Jawbone that revealed the bone to be congeneric of elephants .
Any question of human involvement disappeared when Holliday witness gig tips and cutting tools among the osseous tissue , let in one with bone fragments both above and below . The tools bear the typical vogue of theClovis civilisation .
Vance Holliday / University of Arizona . archaeologist educe the of the essence jaw .
Since more northerly Clovis populations are known to havehunted mammoths , which were even larger than gomphotheres , it is no surprise surviving gomphothere would have been point .
" This is the first Clovis gomphothere . It ’s the first evidence that citizenry were hunt gomphotheres in North America , and it adds another item to the Clovis menu , " state Holliday .
