Mastodon bones from 130,000 years ago ‘could rewrite human history’

A puzzling find in America could change our ideas on human history – a mastodon skeleton which looks like it was smashed to pieces by ancient humans 130,000 years ago.

The puzzling part is that scientists believed that humans only arrived in America around 13,000 years ago – and the skeleton dates from 100,000 years before that.

Researchers found a skeleton where the bones appeared to have been broken with stone tools – which were found alongside – and a tusk was stuck upright in the ground.

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The researchers write, ‘It appears to be impossible that a mastodon could somehow force its own tusk into the underlying deposits.’

Uranium dating show the site is around 130,000 years old – which has made the find highly controversial.

Previously, researchers believed that humans crossed into America no earlier than 15,000 years ago, via a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia – probably during the last ice age.

If the bones were smashed apart by early humans, it suggests that Neanderthals or another human-related species may have crossed during a previous ice age, 100,000 years earlier.

‘My first reaction on reading this paper was, “No. This is wrong. Something’s wrong,'” said John McNabb of the University of Southampton.

‘If it does turn out to be true, it changes absolutely everything.’