Who Got to Mastodon First? Ice Age Wolves, Bears, or Man?

The Morrow County, Ohio, Cedar Creek Mastodon, might have met this fate, its dead carcass scavenged by dire wolves and other predators such as bears and saber-toothed "tigers", not to mention vultures.  This 1911 illustration  of dire wolves fighting with the tiger in the  LaBrea Tar Pits of California is in the public domain..

Life wasn’t easy in the Ice Age, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s beginning to look like Ohio’s Morrow County Mastodon might have been torn apart by a pack of Ice Age wolves.

We know that there was at least one wolf that bit into the mastodon’s bones because the excavation uncovered forensic evidence left behind by the guilty party—a canine tooth embedded in the bone.

There were several species of Ice Age wolves, but the “Dire” wolf  is the likeliest suspect because it depended on scavenging dead bodies more than killing, especially in the case of big game.   Although it weighed about 25 percent more than modern wolves, it was slower than other Ice Age wolf species, so it resorted to hunting in packs and killing slower moving animals like the mastodon or scavenging any corpse it stumbled into.

In the most complete report to date, to the volunteers participating in the dig, excavation leader Nigel Brush said he and his colleagues are beginning to wonder if the mastodon might have died of old age and then been eaten by the Dire wolf and other scavengers.

But they have not discarded the original hypothesis—that the mastodon was killed by Paleo-Indians   and butchered.  In that case, the scavenging was done after the men were through with the carcass.

Brush is an associate professor of geology at Ashland University in Ohio.

Brush reported that Brian Redmond , head of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, will have the bone with the embedded wolf tooth X-rayed to get a better view of the tooth.  He also wrote that, “The mastodon bones contain an abundance of gnaw and puncture marks from predators such as wolves and bears.  Among the bones of the mastodon, we have found a tooth (an incisor) and several fragments of leg bone that appear to be from some other Ice Age herbivore (perhaps a musk-ox or stag-moose ?).”

It seems to me that the scavenger hypothesis arose when Brush learned, from geological studies being done at the site, that the broken bones found in the excavation site had been carried there by water flowing from upland of the site, farther from the bog that would have made a natural trap-and-kill site for Paleo-Indians.

Brush also cited the fact that only two possible man-made cut marks on the bones have been found so far, leaving open the possibility that those cuts are not the work of human tools after all.   And most of the flint flakes found were the result of natural weathering and frost or from being washed into the excavation site, rather than from man using or making flint weapons or butchering tools.

But, Metin Eren,  an expert on lithics, the study of the human use of stone for tools, came to the lab at Ashland University and found that about a  the dozen of the flint pieces were possibly worked by people, so a few of the flakes will be sent to another lab for further analysis for blood and protein residues and edge wear from butchering.

Nick Kardulias, another lithics expert, will be doing a more detailed examination of the flint pieces and soil cores recovered from the site.  Kardulias and his students from the College of Wooster  in Ohio have been helping with the excavation along with students from Ashland University and other universities.

Dueling Hypotheses:  Man or Wolf?

He said the only way to decide between the two competing hypotheses is through the lab analyses that will continue through the winter at Ashland University.  He said that one of the critical pieces of evidence to support the Paleo-Indian kill hypothesis would be if the mastodon bones are found-- through carbon-14 testing--to be between 16,000 and 10,000 years old, when Paleo-Indians and mastodons co-existed.

Brush’ report included a Florida lab’s carbon-14 test results on samples taken from the bottom and top of the bog near the excavation site:  Plant material taken from the top of the bog dated to about 11,200 years ago,  while a wood sample from the bottom of the bog was about 12,500 years old.
Another critical piece of evidence to support the kill/butchery site hypothesis, he wrote, would be if they found mastodon blood and protein residues on some of the flint pieces they found that appeared to be used to butcher.   A fourth piece of critical evidence would be confirmation that the possible cut marks on two mastodon bones “are indeed cut marks.”

Brush discounted speculation that some of the rounded stones found near the bones were used to hammer bones to crush them, saying that the stones could just be one of the many cobble stones found  in the natural stone-and-gravel deposits below the excavation site.   He reported that, “We have washed dozens of these cobbles in the lab and have yet to find any fresh surface alteration that we could unequivocally equate with human tool use.”

Occam’s Razor

At that point in his report, Brush wrote that “Occam’s Razor is often quite useful in science:  The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation.  Given the highly battered condition of the cobbles thus far recovered from the site, natural weathering appears to be a much more likely explanation than human utilization.”  He showed a number of the possible hammerstones and other possible stone tools to several other professional archaeologists and all agreed  with Brush.

Brush also cites another axiom from his scientific experience:  “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

As part of this search for strong evidence, Greg Wiles, professor of geology at the College of Wooster, will submit two charcoal samples for carbon-14 dating to the same Florida lab that dated the bog samples, to see if the soil layer where the mastodon bones were found are in the same age range as the bog.  And, Redmond will submit a collagen sample, from one of the four mastodon teeth found, to the Florida lab for carbon dating--hoping there is enough collagen present to do the test.   Earlier this fall, Redmond had submitted a thoracic vertebrae from the Morrow County mastodon, but heavy weathering had removed too much collagen for carbon dating to succeed.

Brush’ report also said that Gregory McDonald, a bone specialist and senior curator of natural history at the National Park Service in Fort Collins, Colorado, might have time to visit the Ashland lab to identify some of the mastodon bones, when he speaks on December 12 at the Cleveland Museum, on "The Snowmastodon Project" .

Note:  What I call the Morrow County mastodon is officially called the Cedar Creek Mastodon, for the creek that runs near the excavation site.  Also, I have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of Nature and natural history.  I began this blog and website to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.  All of my writing is done on a volunteer basis.

Fragments of a  leg bone found at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site could be that of the stag-moose, possibly another victim of the bone-crushing teeth of the Ice Age dire wolf.  (1912 illustration in public domain.)