Cerutti Mastodon, California, reinterpreted as modern road construction "kill"

[DPS Ammonite]

News of a new species of mastodon, the Pacific Mastodon, led me to read about another interesting story about the Cerutti Mastodon found in San Diego, California that was about 130,000 years old. Supposedly humans broke its bones with stones before it was buried. Needless to say, there was a great amount of disagreement that humans were in the America’s 130,000 years ago. 

 

An interesting article referencing the Cerutti Mastodon was written in 2017 or later. The author suggested that a giant capuchin monkey may have broken the mastodon’s bones. 

 

Enter a small, middle aged man suited up and engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke: “That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop.....the Twilight Zone.”

 

https://megafauna.com/a-giant-capuchin-monkey/

[Oxytropidoceras]

New Journal Article Concludes Cerutti Mastodon

Bones Broken Recently by Construction Equipment,

Not Hunters 130,000 Years Ago, Jason Colavito, 

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/new-journal-article-concludes-cerutti-mastodon-bones-broken-recently-by-construction-equipment-not-hunters-130000-years-ago

 

The paper is:

 

Ferrell, P.M., 2019. The Cerutti Mastodon Site Reinterpreted 

with Reference to Freeway Construction Plans and Methods. 

PaleoAmerica, pp.1-7.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20555563.2019.1589663

 

A reported case of "green bone" spiral 
mammoth bone breakage by heavy machinery is: 

 

Haynes, G., 2017. Taphonomy of the Inglewood mammoth

(Mammuthus columbi)(Maryland, USA): Green-bone fracturing

of fossil bones. Quaternary International, 445, pp.171-183.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298209908_Taphonomy_of_the_Inglewood_mammoth_Mammuthus_columbi_Maryland_USA_Green-bone_fracturing_of_fossil_bones

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gary_Haynes

 

Yours,

 

Paul H.

[Bradford Riney]

The Cerutti Mastodon. PM Ferell's assumptions that the bone breakeage there was caused by heavy machinery, specifically by 5 ton dump trucks is absolute fantasy. I was there from day 1 and none of those modern day monsters were present. What was present was 1 Caterpillar 235c excavator parked on top of the berm. The excavator spent the day reaching down 7' below the top of the berm to the CM Site, scooping up 3 cubic yards of previously undisturbed Pleistocene sediment, lifting the full bucket up and over the berm, spinning around and dumping the material behind it on the south facing slope to be hauled conveniently away by Caterpillar 637 and 631 scrapers. A big expensive truck haul involving Ferrell's mythological 5 ton dump trucks running over the CM Site smashing everything to bits just simply never occurred and was not needed. The Cat 235c excavator tagged the extreme north east 3 units of the CM Site with the bucket teeth, damaging a few ribs, the horizontal tusk and the vertical tusk , leaving the vast majority of the site untouched, cemented and still preserved within Pedogenic carbonate conretions in the siltstones of Bed E. The idea that the excavator bucket up ended and then jammed one of the tusks vertically into the underling Bed D sandstone would have complete destroyed it, fragmenting it into thousands of tiny white fragments. That's what happened to the parts that it did hit enabling the CM Site's discovery. That's known as "The Scraper Tax."  Over the next 5 months both SDNHM paleontologists and archaeologists Larry Agenbroad and Jim Mead carefully exposed and documented this taphonomically anomalous occurrence of stone and bone. 

[Bradford Riney]

Whoops!, I forgot to give some info that's on the SDNHM website. Go to the"Cerutti Mastodon Discovery" Press kit. Go to "Media info" and Click "here" in little black letters. Click "Images" and then Click "Excavation Photos". There also is another choice to click  for videos.

[Bradford Riney]

I just read "Did a Giant Capuchin Monkey Smash the Cerutti Mastodon Bones". Very impressed. This paper addresses the taphonomic  realities of the CM Site with an alternate cause other than by hominins. In the interfingering transgressive estuarine and terrestial San Diego County coastal valley fills, one finds evidence of a much warmer climate between 130,000 and 120,000 years ago. These well documented deposits record the rapid rise of world sea level over a period of approximately  20,000 years, filling the local coastal valleys with roughly 200' of marine, estuarine, lacustrine and fluvial sediments. The estuarine sediments preserve a  subtropical marine fauna with Golfo De California taxa such as Dosinia and Pinna while the non marine sediments further up the valleys at approximately the same horizon  have yielded Tapirus and Hydrochoerus  which occur today in tropical Central and South America. These same valley fill deposits preserved beautiful partially articulated skeletons of Bison latifrons from the I-15 and SR-76 interchange and the Quarry Creek development in Carlsbad California as well as mammoths, also from approximately the same horizons. All of these were brought to light with little damage from the massive Caterpillar 657 scrapers that exposed them.  These modern day man made monsters weigh 105,000 lbs minus the load. In my nearly 40 years monitoring construction sites,  discovering hundreds of large mammal sites all exposed by massive grading machines, I have never seen fossil bone spirally fracture and create a very convincing Paleolithic archaeological site such as the CM Site. It is obvious to me  and to the author of this paper the the CM Site breakeage is indeed ancient. So with that said, the question begs, if tapirs and capybaras made it to San Diego California, why not an extinct giant species of tool using Capuchin monkey?, conversely if Bison latifrons and mammoths made it to San Diego at the same time  from Asia , why not a species of human?