http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/jun/05/ ... -treasure/
Of course, Dr. Purdy correctly goes on to note:VERO BEACH — Local amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence here up to 13,000 years ago.
A 15-inch-long prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach contains a crude engraving of a mammoth or mastodon on it, said Dr. Barbara Purdy, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Florida.
“It is humbling to realize that we are seeing what the hunter saw more than 13,000 years ago,” Purdy said.
Tests so far have shown it to be genuine.
If so, it appears to be “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” she wrote in a report to other scientists.
Which is to say that the etching could be older than 13,000 years...but not younger. How much older is an important question.“The incising would have to be at least 13,000 years old because that is when the animals became extinct and more recent people would not have seen an elephant to etch,” Purdy wrote in her report about the find. The etching is on bone from either a mammoth, mastodon or giant sloth.