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TUCSON, ARIZONA—Clovis projectile points and cutting tools have been found mingled with the bones of two juvenile gomphotheres, elephant-like relatives of mastadons and mammoths, in northwestern Mexico. Gomphotheres are known to have been hunted in Central and South America, but this is the first time such evidence has been found in North America. “At first, just based on the size of the bone, we thought maybe it was a bison, because extinct bison were a little bigger than our modern bison. We finally found the mandible, and that’s what told the tale,” Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona told Science Daily. The bones have been dated to 13,400 years ago, making them the last known gomphotheres in North America.
