Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History confirms paleontological site in Oaxaca
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History confirms paleontological site in Oaxaca
MEXICO CITY.- To Spanish pre Historian Eudald Carbonell, the labor of a field archaeologist is planetary and, when one (archaeologist) works on the evolution of men, a country must not be considered as a boundary. What truly is fundamental is the knowledge and the thinking that regards human beings. Under this premise, he came to excavate a site in North America for the first time: Chazumba, Oaxaca, where investigators from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered a paleontological site with possible human presence.
The history of the investigation project of Oaxaca started in 2006 when a group of young settlers, who were exploring a ravine near their community, found bone fragments belonging to animals with big dimensions; the bones had fallen from an 11 meter [36.08 feet] wall. The group contacted the local authorities and they, in turn, contacted INAH. The paleontologist Joaquin Arroyo inspected the site and then verified that the bones had indeed belonged to extinct animals from the last stages of the Pleistocene. They inhabited the earth about 25,000 years ago.
In two excavation fronts located over the ravine’s walls, 40 meters [131.23 feet] square and 20 meters (65.61 feet) square respectively, investigators have found hundreds of gomphotheres (a type of pachyderm not unlike the mammoth but in smaller size), glyptodont, mylodon, giant sloth, deer, turtle, woodrat and rabbit, along with a bird species and an amphibian. Both sites have been explored during four cultivating seasons that took place in 2007, 2008, 2010 and the most recent was carried out this year (2013), which concluded last week.
In both places they have registered ten silex chips that seem to have been cut by rocks and not as the result of natural events. However, Ramon Viñas-Vallverdu and Joaquin Arroyo, co-directors of the Oaxaca project, have considered it necessary to find more of these objects in order to determine if they are the result of human work; in the same way, it’s necessary to apply to these objects lithic studies to determine if they have marks that might indicate usage.
More:
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=61227
= new reply since forum marked as read
Still pretty speculative at this stage, but worth pursuing. 
