VERO BEACH — The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.,
has found no reason to dispute the authenticity of an
unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a
human presence in Florida up to 13,000 years ago. In early 2009,
fossil collector James Kennedy cleaned off an old bone he found
two years earlier and noticed some lines on it — lines that
turned out to be a clear etching of a walking mammoth with
tusks. The bone came from an area north of Vero Beach, but the
exact location hasn't been disclosed. University of Florida
researchers scrutinized the four-inch etching on the 15-inch
prehistoric bone with an electron microscope and their tests
showed it to be genuine. This year, Kennedy took the bone to the
National Museum of Natural History for further study.
Smithsonian Institution archaeologists made a copy and used
advanced techniques to look at the etching. "We have found no
traces that would indicate that a [modern] metal tool was used
to carve the bone," said Dennis Stanford, who