Florida Museum
Photo by
Mary Warrick.
Mammoth Art in America, or Mammoth Fraud?
NGM Blog Central
National Geographic
Posted Jun 10,2009
The image of what appears to be a mammoth was recently discovered on a bone found in Vero Beach, Florida. The white box is approximately 3 inches wide.
Let's hope, hope, hope it is true—mammoth art in North America just like what they have in Europe.
Now that is something I never thought I'd see. It is as if someone found American Indian arrowheads
on the banks of the Seine.
A local newspaper in Vero Beach, Florida, Vero Beach 32963, has announced what will be among the most significant discoveries of prehistoric art in the New World, if it holds up. See the National Geographic news article and the Vero Beach 32963 report for more information. The find, which is an engraved bone with what looks like a mammoth on it, is of major significance because there is simply nothing like it in the New World. Many such engravings, however, are known from European paleolithic art, which began around 35,000 years ago and continued until the end of the paleolithic around 10,000 years ago.
The engraved bone was found by an amateur fossil collector who had collected it in the vicinity of Vero Beach, which is known to fossil collectors for its prehistoric mammal fossils and shark teeth. The artifact had been collected some years ago and sat in a box in a collector's possession since then. When the specimen came to the attention of Dr. Barbara Purdy and other experts at the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History, they initiated a study which has thus far been unable to show that it is a fake. At this time, they are cautiously supporting its authenticity.
Whatever the case regarding the engraving's authenticity, there are several problems with this situation. First, Vero Beach 32963 is not exactly a peer-reviewed scientific publication. This makes it difficult for scientists who have not seen the specimen to know what to think.
In an informal sampling of reactions to the photographs of the specimen, various experts weighed in positively.
Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History said, "One does have to wonder, but at face value it looks pretty good."
Lawrence Straus of the University of New Mexico, with one foot out the door on the way to study paleolithic material in Spain, said, "What a sensational find (if true)."
John Gifford of the Universlty of Miami, said, "It is a remarkable find, but there's no good contextual information."
Each one of these scientists qualified their enthusiasm with a cautionary note. The reason is that this is another case of scientific publication by non-science media (see earlier postings on sensational finds). Much work needs to be done before the scientific world can fully embrace this discovery. That will include publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Why all the caution?
Once upon a time another mammoth was found inscribed on an artifact in North America. This time it was a shell from Delaware. That was 1864 and the artifact became known as the Holly Oak pendant. For many years this artifact was considered as evidence for an American paleolithic period that paralleled that of Europe. The artifact was finally debunked in the mid-1980s as a modern forgery. The engraving was done on an old shell by someone who was probably inspired by the 1864 discovery of a depiction of a woolly mammoth on a fragment of mammoth tusk from La Madeleine in France.
One sincerely hopes that this new discovery is not a fraud. Hopefully efforts to establish its original geological context will be successful and proper university-led excavations in the area where it was found can commence. All of those efforts should be supported. Without a context, it will be difficult to suppress doubts about the Vero Beach Mammoth's authenticity and questions about what it is doing here in America.
