Charlie Hatchett wrote:
Then, you have the San Diego paleontologist research group that published research concerning a 335,000 B.P. mastodon kill site in San Diego County...again, to date, it's been ignored by the ge
.
Did anyone else besides me think that Charlie was referring to a San Diego paleontologist research group that published research in which they claimed to have found a 335,000 BP mastodon kill site?
Not surprisingly I guess, they didn't. This is purely Charlie's interpretation.
The report can be found here:
http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.co ... n_1995.pdf
Charlie uses it as an example of a buried report, and says "In summary, the report unequivocally dates a mastodon kill site near San Diego at 335,000 year B.P. (uranium series)."
So far as I can see, this is flat out false. The report doesn't even mention a kill site, it discusses a mastodon fossil.
Sorry Charlie, but you've lost some credibility here.
A quick search turns up this discussion of the report - where it says quote and the line begins with a number, that's Charlie writing, with 'KidCharlemagne' replying
Started by Charlie Hatchett | Post by KidCharlemagne
Quote:
1. There was no articulation of mastodon elements and no anatomical trend to their
placement in the quarry...
This may scream "kill site" to you, Charlie, but it screams "secondary deposition from eroded fossil bed" to me.
Quote:
2. Many bones were fragmentary and displayed distinct types of breakage...
"Distinct" here means that the breakage patterns were able to be classified, not that they were human in origin/agency. Articles making such bold claims generally do it out in the open, not in code.
Quote:
3. Of special note was the discovery of both isolated femur heads side-by-side...
Wow. Two femur hears (note, it says nothing of them being from the same individual) next to each other. Call C. Vance Haynes!
Quote:
4. Adjacent to the femur heads lay fragments of ribs, one of which was found lying directly on a plutonic cobble...
Interesting. So presumably a flowing stream at one point deposited a rib right on top of a piece of granite. Still, I don't see anything suggesting human agency here.
Quote:
5. Also found in this concentration was a long piece of a long bone shaft displaying distinct spiral fracturing...
Spiral fracturing occurs from a type of force applied to the bone, not exclusively as a result of human activity. Force applied in two different directions to a single bone (a twisting motion) produces this. It's very common for this type of fracture to occur naturally.
Quote:
6. ...sharply fractured piece with a distinct impact scar on it’s internal surface
Not sure what this even means. Sounds like they're saying that a bone was struck with a force perpendicular to its long axis, and a chip of bone on the inside of the break was dislodged. No evidence of humans here.
Quote:
7. ...distal 70 cm of a tusk was found distal end down, in an upright orientation...
8. Coarse sand from Bed D was found as an infilling along side of the tusk some 40 cm into Bed C...
Tusk embedded in stream bed, water flow around tusk causes some erosion of stream sediments around it. Gradually, sand fills in around the tusk where perturbations of stream flow originally caused lighter sediments to be swept away.
No humans here.
Quote:
9. The more intact larger rocks displayed smoothly rounded surfaces, indicative of stream transport...
10. Many of the smaller rock fragments had sharp, angular edges that lacked signs of abrasion...
11. There are seven instances in which rock fragments and/ or boulders found separated in the quarry were able to be reassembled...
So, let's see... We have stream cobbles, some smaller pieces of broken stream cobbles that show no use wear, and coincidentally some of the broken rocks in the streambed could be fitted back together again.
Why they refit them, I couldn't say. Maybe they just felt like it. Why they put it in the report? I have no idea. But they certainly don't say anything to suggest that they think it had anything to do with people.
Quote:
12. It is plausible that all of the plutonic rock fragments ...are part of the same original boulder...
Larger rocks break into smaller pieces, and sometimes those pieces don't travel very far. This is an excellent (and pointless) hypothesis.