An Extinct Relative of Elephant Discovered in Mexico newsmaine.net
go to original July 15, 2014

A gomphothere jaw bone in situ at El Fin del Mundo excavation site. (Vance T. Holliday)

At a site widely known as the "El Fin del Mundo" (End of the World) situated in northwestern Sonora region of Mexico, archaeologists have discovered 13,400-year-old spear points stuck with bones of an extinct elephant relative called the gomphothere.

This discovery of the spears and animal bone has given an all new insight of the existence of gomphothere in North America and at the same time of a prehistoric group of paleo-Indians known as the Clovis culture. These particular unearthed fossils are the oldest Clovis sites ever found and also the bones are of the youngest gomphotheres ever discovered in North America.

Gomphothere had four sharp tusks for defense and were smaller than mastodons and mammoths. They were more common in Central and South America during the last ice age. On the other hand, 13,400-year-old spear was of the paleo-Indians. The first of these Native Americans are thought to have crossed to the American continent from prehistoric Siberia to Alaska in that era thereby reaching Mexico finally.

Historians until now had largely believed that gomphotheres had vanished from the face of earth before humans reached North America.

Read the rest at newsmaine.net



An artist’s depiction of a gomphothere. (Charles R. Knight)

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