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Based on sites excavated in the western United States, archaeologists know Paleo-American Clovis hunter-gatherers who lived around the time of the extinctions at least occasionally [emphasis added] killed or scavenged Ice Age megafauna such as mammoths. There they've found preserved bones of megafauna together with the stone tools used for killing and butchering these animals...Unfortunately, many areas in the Southeastern United States lack sites with preserved bone and associated stone tools that might indicate whether megafauna were hunted there by Clovis or other Paleo-American cultures. Without evidence of preserved bones of megafauna, archaeologists have to find other ways to examine...

For nearly a decade, scientists and Northwest tribes in Washington state fought bitterly over whether to bury or study the 9,500-year-old bones known as Kennewick Man. Scientists won the battle, and now, after years of careful examination, they're releasing some of their findings. For starters, Kennewick Man was buff. I mean, really beefcake. So says Doug Owsley, head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and the man who led the study of the ancient remains. Owsley can read the bones like we might read a book. He looks for ridge lines that indicate which muscles...

South Americans helped colonise Easter Island centuries before Europeans reached it. Clear genetic evidence has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonised from the west, there was also some influx of people from the Americas. ~~~snip~~~ Now Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo in Norway has found clear evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl's hypothesis. In 1971 and 2008 he collected blood samples from Easter Islanders whose ancestors had not interbred with Europeans and other visitors to the island. Thorsby looked at the HLA genes,...

11,000-year-old Texans are stars of the Bosque Museum 01:31 PM CST on Friday, November 17, 2006 By MARY G. RAMOS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News A special new exhibit at the Bosque Museum in Clifton, Texas, features the lives of some extremely early Texans. Prehistoric people (called Paleo-Americans by archaeologists) lived in a cave shelter on the western bank of the Brazos River a bit downstream from the Lake Whitney Dam in Bosque County about 11,000 years ago. Paleo-Americans were using the 150-foot by 30-foot shelter before ancient Egyptian civilization began. A Texas archaeologist discovered the shelter,...