LAWRENCE--Bones of now-extinct animals and a rock fragment discovered last summer in northwestern Kansas could rewrite the history of humans on the Great Plains. The bones, which appear to have been fractured by humans, were collected from a site in Sherman County, Kansas, and studied by scientists at the Kansas Geological Survey, the University of Kansas, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Dated by carbon-14 methods at 12,200 years old, the bones could be the oldest evidence of human occupation in Kansas, and may be the oldest evidence of humans on the Great Plains....
Scientists previously dated the earliest confirmed evidence of humans on the Great Plains at 11,000 to 11,500 years ago. That was based on mammoth kill sites in western North America, including the first find near Greeley, Colorado, excavated by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
The new discoveries could challenge that benchmark.
I'm not sure how seriously people take the Clovis barrier these days. Evidence keeps accumulating for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America but so much of it is tenuous and problematic.
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