CMS Bone Breakage Experiment
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Dr. Steve Holen, director of research at the Center for American Paleolithic Research, and Adam Thomas, an undergraduate student of Steve’s, experimenting on how bones break under percussion using stones as hammers and anvils. The bone used for the experiment is a leg bone of a recently deceased modern elephant (died of natural causes), a mastodon relative. Video was shot in Tanzania.
The breaks made by Holen and his team match those found on 130,000-year-old mastodon bones unearthed in southern California. Holen and colleagues have suggested that is evidence of a hominin presence in the Americas at the time.
Credit: Kathleen Holen, co-director, Center for American Paleolithic Research
The breaks made by Holen and his team match those found on 130,000-year-old mastodon bones unearthed in southern California. Holen and colleagues have suggested that is evidence of a hominin presence in the Americas at the time.
Credit: Kathleen Holen, co-director, Center for American Paleolithic Research