CONVERSE COUNTY, WYOMING—CNN reports that 32 fragments of bone needles have been discovered at Wyoming’s La Prele Mammoth site, which consists of dozens of temporary dwellings and the butchered remains of a young mammoth. The 13,000-year-old needles were found when sediment from the site was sifted through a fine mesh screen. Analysis of bone collagen with zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, or ZooMS, indicates that the needles had been made from the bones of red foxes, bobcats, mountain lions, lynx, the extinct American cheetah, and hares or rabbits. “It was extremely surprising that these needles were made out of small carnivores,” said Spencer Pelton, Wyoming state archaeologist. He and his colleagues had expected to find that the needles had been crafted from the bones of bison or mammoths, but they soon realized that using the fine limb and paw bones of smaller animals would reduce the amount of work necessary to produce each tool. The needles were likely used to make warm, tailored clothing, Pelton added. “It would have likely incorporated fur fringes around the sleeves and hood, which is why we think people were trapping animals like foxes, cats, and hares in the first place,” he explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS ONE. To read about the oldest known bead in the Western Hemisphere that was found at the La Prele site, go to “Around the World: Wyoming.”

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Source: archaeology.org