Piedra Museo is an archaeological site in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, and one of the earliest known archaeological remains in the Americas

Archaeology of the Americas

The archaeology of the Americas is the study of the archaeology of North America , Central America, South America and the Caribbean...

.

Overview

The site was discovered around 1910 by Argentine naturalist Florentino Ameghino

Florentino Ameghino

Florentino Ameghino was an Argentine naturalist, paleontologist, anthropologist and zoologist.Born in Luján, son of Italian immigrants, Ameghino was a self-taught naturalist, and focused his study on the lands of the southern Pampas...

, who wrote the first detailed anthropological study of Argentina, La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata (The Antiquity of Man in the Río de la Plata Basin), in 1878. A further, 1995 excavation by University of La Plata archaeologist Dr. Laura Miotti made a carbon dating analysis possible, and led to the discovery that its human fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 remains date from approximately 11000 BC.

The site, located 250 km (150 mi) from Pico Truncado

Pico Truncado

Pico Truncado is a town and municipality in Santa Cruz Province in southern Argentina....

, in Deseado Department

Deseado Department

Deseado Department is a department in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. It has a population of 72,953 and an area of 63,784 km². The seat of the department is in Puerto Deseado.-Municipalities:* Caleta Olivia* Cañadón Seco* Fitz Roy* Jaramillo...

 (Santa Cruz Province), is among the oldest archaeological remains uncovered in the Americas. Its discoveries included that of spear heads that contained traces of mylodon

Mylodon

Mylodon is an extinct genus of giant ground sloth that lived in the Patagonia area of South America until roughly 10,000 years ago.Mylodon weighed about and stood up to tall when raised up on its hind legs. Preserved dung has shown it was a herbivore. It had very thick hide and had osteoderms...

 and hippidion

Hippidion

Hippidion was a Welsh pony-sized horse that lived in South America during the Pleistocene epoch, between two million and 10,000 years ago....

, among other animals known to have been extinct since at least 10000 BC. Its original inhabitants, the Toldense people, were hunter gatherers that subsisted on these and other prey, such as rhea

Rhea (bird)

The rheas are ratites in the genus Rhea, native to South America. There are two existing species: the Greater or American Rhea and the Lesser or Darwin's Rhea. The genus name was given in 1752 by Paul Möhring and adopted as the English common name. Möhring's reason for choosing this name, from the...

 and guanacos.

Piedra Museo, like Pedra Furada

Pedra Furada

Pedra Furada is a Portuguese parish, located in the municipality of Barcelos. It has a population of 466 inhabitants and a total area of 2.10 km²....

 (Brasil), Monte Verde

Monte Verde

Monte Verde is an archaeological site in southern Chile, located in the northern Patagonia near Puerto Montt, Chile, which has been dated to 14,800 years BP . This dating adds to the evidence showing that settlement in the Americas pre-dates the Clovis culture by roughly 1000 years...

 (Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

), Topper

Topper (archaeological site)

Topper is an archaeological site located along the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina in the United States. It is noted as the location of controversial artifacts believed by some archaeologists to indicate human habitation of the New World earlier than the Clovis culture,...

, and the Meadowcroft Rockshelter (United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

), in turn have led to alternative theories to that of the "Clovis First" hypothesis on the settlement of the Americas (the assumption, based on lacking evidence to the contrary, that the Clovis culture

Clovis culture

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 RCYBP , at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools...

 was the first in the Western Hemisphere

Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian and east of the Antimeridian , the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.In this sense, the western hemisphere consists of the western portions...

).

Fossils from Piedra Museo, as well as artifacts and petroglyph

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s from the nearby Los Toldos site, are housed in the Pico Truncado Regional Museum of History.