For photos of Hinds Cave (including a coprolite) and a very informative description of the perishable archeological finds (fibers, netting,
cordage, etc), go to the Texas Beyond History website and click on the dot labeled Hinds Cave on the map of Texas. Texas A&M excavated part of
the midden in the mid-1970s, and I went there once around 1979. The description includes a sidebar titled "Cave, Shelter, or Rockshelter";
Hinds Cave is a large rockshelter, 120 ft wide by 75 ft deep.
Logan
On 1/19/2011 10:33 PM, Jerry wrote:
Fossils of Oldest domesticated dog discovered
David Brown
People in North America were breeding—and eating—domestic dogs as early as
9,400 years ago, according to new analysis of a bone fragment discovered in a
Texas cave. Scientists were able to identify the bone—about the size of an
adult's pinkie nail—as a piece of the right occipital condyle of a canine.
Occiptal condyles are parts of vertebrate skulls where the skull meets the
spine.
Genetic tests later proved that the bone comes from a dog and not a wolf, coyote, or fox.
The bone is the earliest known evidence of dog domestication in the Americas, predating
other claims by nearly 8,000 years, said study co-author Samuel Belknap III, a graduate
student at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute. "As a genetically
identified domestic dog, it's significantly older than any other ones that we have from
the New World," Belknap said.
What's more, the bone fragment was found inside ancient human feces, which suggests dogs were being
domesticated in the Americas for more than chores and companionship. "It's small enough to
pass through the gut, but it's still larger than you would expect to find," Belknap said of
the bone piece. "It's surprising the sizes of some of the bones that people were swallowing.
They didn't chew their food quite as well as people do today."
The dog bone sample was found in 2009 in Hinds Cave in southwestern Texas.
Previous archaeological evidence suggests a group of unidentified
hunter-gatherers occupied the cave more than 9,000 years ago. Working under
Kristin Sobolik at the University of Maine, Belknap sent the newfound bone to
the University of Oklahoma, where molecular anthropologist Cecil Lewis and his
team conducted the genetic tests. Based on previous DNA evidence, scientists
think humans began breeding dogs from gray wolves sometime between 40,000 and
15,000 years ago.
> From the size of the bone, Belknap and fellow grad student Robert Ingraham
think the dog from the Texas cave weighed roughly 25 to 30 pounds (11.3 to 13.6
kilograms) and may have resembled some breeds of Mexican and Peruvian dogs.
Archaeological evidence suggests some Native Americans, such as the Sioux of the
Great Plains, once used dogs to transport goods in much the same way that Inuit in
Alaska use sled dogs.
Historical accounts from Spanish missionaries and early Europeans explorers starting in
the 15th century also document some cultures across the Americas eating dogs in times of
famine or for ceremonial purposes. Although the dog bone was embedded in dried fecal
remains, finding the sample was messy work: The bone was revealed only when Belknap
rehydrated the feces and ran the resulting mixture through a sieve. Despite its age, the
rehydrated poop gave off an unmistakable odor, Belknap said. "I tend to scare off
people in the anthropology department when I'm decanting my samples," he said.
http://dailymailnews.com/0111/20/Snippets/index.php?id=3
The Daily Mail, 19 January 2011
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