PBS: Nova-Ice Age Death Trap

[wiseshanks]

I just finished watching Nova this evening on PBS. The show was titled "Ice Age Death Trap." The episode was centered in Colorado at the Snowmass resort. While digging out a resivoir, a bulldozer operator noticed bone roll out of the ground. Needless to say, archaeologists were contacted and began excavating the site. The kicker was that a dam was to be built and would flood the site (sounds about right) so they only had 50 or 60 days. The site turned out to be an ancient lake bed full of ace age fossils. Mammoth, mastadon, bison, ground sloth, and camel remains were found. The deepest layer of mastadon assembledges dated to around 100,000 years ago and contained what appeared to be likely a family group of various ages. The carcasses were mixed in with a line of rock and boulders, likely from a land slide. Above the rock layer, more animals were found in a layer of silt and clay.

Here's where I got a big surprise: in the middle of the silt/clay layer, a lone mastadon carcass was found surrounded by numerous boulders. No where else in this strata layer were any rocks/boulders. This threw up a flag to one of the lead paleontologists at the dig, leading him to hypothesize that they were potentially viewing a "meat stash" and that paleo indians submerged meat in bodies of water for preservation and that they used boulders to hold the carcass under the water. The team then sampled bone and the surrounding clay to get a carbon date. The bone dating was inconclusive, however, the clay turned up a date of around 45,000 years ago. The paleontologists slowed down the excavation at this point then the most important bone of the dig was found. A mastadon rib bone that appeared to have multiple cut marks running parallel with eachother. Of course the day the rib bone was found, the team only had one more day of excavation left so they encased the rest of the mastadon in plaster and removed it from the site for further investigation.

The find definetely raised far more questions than it answered and I was very surprised when the program entertained the fact of possible paleo indian occupation. Something I found odd about the site was the fact that out of the 4,000 bones found, not one belonged to a predator. This is probably old news on here but I searched "Snowmass" and returned no results. I'm not sure when the episode will air agian but I'm sure it will eventually stream from Nova's website.

NOVA | Ice Age Death Trap

[Middle Mountain]

I caught last half of it and liked seeing those clovis's and animation of the creatures and such. Nice of you to post this.

[drdave514]

I watched the show as well and that's a surprisingly good summary.

The stones around the mastadon were VERY interesting. The rib cuts as well.

I was hoping they'd pull out a stone tool. It would be interesting to know if there are any new developments as I'm sure they are going to go over every bone, looking for more marks.

[wiseshanks]

Originally Posted by drdave514

I watched the show as well and that's a surprisingly good summary.

The stones around the mastadon were VERY interesting. The rib cuts as well.

I was hoping they'd pull out a stone tool. It would be interesting to know if there are any new developments as I'm sure they are going to go over every bone, looking for more marks.

I tried searching for a picture online of the rib bone with the cut marks and couldn't find anything. It seems to still be sort of under wraps for the time being.

[wiseshanks]

I found the Denver Museum of Nature and Science website on the Snowmastadon Project. It wouldn't let me view anything from my phone but here's the link:
The Snowmastodon Project? : Denver Museum of Nature & Science

[drdave514]

I'm surprised I can't find any pictures of the cut marks. Especially from that site. The best I could do was a picture of a guy looping the cuts.

http://dmnsimages.s3.amazonaws.com/DSC_5981.jpg

[CDEAN]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would they store meat underwater? Wouldn't it just begin to decay eventually like it would above ground?

[drdave514]

It decays at a lower rate due to enzymes in the water and was a common practice, according to the show.

If you bury it, animals will dig it up. If you dry it, you have to carry and defend it. 4000 pounds of meat dehydrated is still a heck of a lot of meat.

[wiseshanks]

You think it would be much easier to keep it in water so you could just cut off what you needed for the moment. I really wish they would've found tools or a flake but they didn't. What is sad is that they excavated the entire site as a fossil site and not a potential human occupation site. They didn't really screen anything to the best of my knowledge. They mostly used shovels and backhoes. I'm sure the site is under water now so we'll probably never know...

[eddies]

very cool post. thanks