Origin of Species

For John, BLUF:  Science is about upstarts posing new ideas that disrupt the established ideas.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Wild Tale of the Cerutti Mastodon, a Fossil That Could Rewrite the Human Story

Here is the sub-headline:

The Cerutti Mastodon, found near San Diego, shows signs of being butchered 130,000 years ago—but by who? Or what?

From Atlas Obscura, by Reporter Gemma Tarlach, 1 August 2024.

Here is the lede plus five:

CALIFORNIA’S HIGHWAY STATE ROUTE 54, skirting southeast of San Diego, doesn’t seem like it would be the catalyst for challenging some of the longest-held ideas about human evolution and our spread across the planet. And yet, in 1992, along SR 54’s ribbons of asphalt and exit ramps to malls, taco joints, and subdivisions, road-widening construction unearthed a fossil that could rewrite the human story—if scientists ever stop arguing about it.

Here, 130,000 years ago beside the future site of SR 54, a young mastodon perished. There’s nothing uncommon about that—these heavily-built, distant relatives of modern elephants were found throughout much of North America at the time. Paleontologists don’t know how the mastodon died, but there is evidence preserved in its bones, and in rocks found nearby, that the animal’s carcass may have been butchered by humans. There’s just one problem with this scenario. Most scientists agree: Homo sapiens left our ancestral homeland of Africa less than 100,000 years ago, and arrived in the Americas only in the last 15,000–25,000 years, as the last ice age ended and travel from Asia and the land bridge known as Beringia, into Alaska and Canada, became possible.

So who—or what—made a meal out of that mastodon?

The fossil is now known as the Cerutti Mastodon, after the late paleontologist Richard Cerutti, who recognized the significance of the bones as they were uncovered during the highway expansion project. Greater San Diego was growing rapidly at the time, and so was its infrastructure. Previous highway projects had turned up a wealth of fossils, from ancient walruses to dinosaurs, and Cerutti worked on behalf of the San Diego Natural History Museum as a site monitor, on the lookout for more discoveries. But he wasn’t expecting this.

Cerutti was initially excited because he thought the fossil belonged to a mammoth. However, further excavation over several months revealed the distinctive teeth of its close relative, the mastodon—and turned up strange things neither Cerutti nor his colleagues could explain.

The heavy, massive limb bones of a mastodon are not easy to break, and specific fracture patterns on the Cerutti specimen were not consistent with natural processes, such as being tumbled in river rapids. There was also the curious arrangement of the bones. Two broken femurs appeared to be placed side by side, and one of the animal’s tusks was almost vertical, as if stuck upright in the sediment like a flagpole.

So maybe we have it all wrong.  Maybe the human species evolved in San Diego, a veritable Garden of Eden, and then moved across the Bering Strait, into Asia, Africa and Europe.  Perhaps we evolved from the Grunion, as they turned their fins into legs..

On the other hand, getting such a theory to be considered, considering the power of the scientific establishment, is a Sisyphian Task.  Look at the efforts expended and wasted by those scientists who differed from Doctor Anthony Fauci during the Covid-19.  Dr Fauci, who famously saaid:  "I Am the Science".

In the mean time, we have a conundrum.  How do we explain the early emergence of human type activity in San Diego, California.

Regards  —  Cliff