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Archaeology

Unexpectedly early signs of Americans

Humans are thought to have reached the Americas less than 15,000 years ago. But evidence of stone tool use on an animal carcass excavated in California points to a much earlier arrival of human relatives from the genus Homo. See Letter p.479

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Figure 1: Broken mastodon bones and possible stone tools at a 130,000-year-old archaeological site in California.

R. A. Cerutti/San Diego Nat. Hist. Mus.

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Correspondence to Erella Hovers.

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Hovers, E. Unexpectedly early signs of Americans. Nature 544, 420–421 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/544420a

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