The Dent railroad depot was once located next to the South Platte River southeast of Milliken, Colorado. Railroad tracks serving the depot ran over eroded Ice-Age terrace remnants south and west of the river’s modern floodplain. After heavy spring rains in April, 1932, railroad foreman Frank Garner noticed very large animal bones eroding from a deep gully draining through a low sandstone bluff west of the tracks. Word of the discovery reached Regis College professor of geology, Jesuit priest Conrad Bilgery, through one of his students, son of the Dent Depot manager. In September, 1932, Father Bilgery excavated some of the bones with his students, identifying them as mammoth. He then contacted Colorado Museum of Natural History (now Denver Museum of Nature & Science) paleontology curator Jesse Figgins about the find. Figgins delegated further exploration of the mammoth remains to museum staff member, Frederick Howarter, who conducted excavations in June and July, 1933, with museum volunteers, trustees, Father Bilgery, and his Regis College students.[2]
The Dent site, in Weld County, Colorado, was a mammoth fossil excavation for most of 1932. The first Dent Clovis point was found November 5, 1932 and the in situ point was found July 7, 1933. [3][4]
The Clovis culture (about 13,300 - 12,900 calendar years before present)[5] used
projectile points in hunting. Previous to the use of projectile points, indigenous people used a tool-kit like that used in
Asia, which included large
axe cutting tools,
scrapers, blades and
flake tools. The
Clovis point was the first use of large, symmetrical and fluted
projectile points.[6][7][nb 1]
Mammoth bones and what were later called
Clovis points[nb 2] were found at the Dent site in 1932. The site was notable for both the presence of the projectile points larger than the known
Folsom points and one of the first direct pieces of evidence that man and mammoth co-existed in the Americas.[10][nb 3] The mammoth killed were not part of a family group, as originally hypothesized, and were not related to other mammoth killed at Clovis sites such as Blackwater, New Mexico and
Miami, Texas.[11]
Total of 15 mammoth, 10 young and 5 adults (22-43), with evidence of butchering.
Radiocarbon dating was performed again, with dates 10,590 +/- 500 years before present and 10,950 +/- 480 years before present, at the low end of the estimated range from 1973. The killings were estimated to have been committed during the fall. Plants of the late
Pleistocene period were found in mammoth teeth tarter: grass,
prickly pear, bark and
riverine plants.[15]
^Clovis culture was considered the first culture to use projectile points to hunt on the North American continent. Since then, a
pre-Clovis site was found in Manis, Washington, that found use of projectile points to hunt mastodons.[8]
^John Colter identified the Dent site projectile points as Clovis points when he worked on the Blackwater Draw site near Clovis, New Mexico in 1936-1937.[9]
^The
Burnet Cave article identifies itself as the first place that Clovis points were located.
^Brunswig, Robert. “The Dent Site: A Late Ice Age Encounter on the South Platte River.” Academia.edu, 2023, www.academia.edu/26183111/The_Dent_Site_A_Late_Ice_Age_Encounter_on_the_South_Platte_River. Accessed 5 Oct. 2023.
^
abCassells, E. Steve. (1997). The Archaeology of Colorado, Revised Edition. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. p. 58.
ISBN1-55566-193-9.
^Cassells, E. Steve. (1997). The Archaeology of Colorado, Revised Edition. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. pp. 62-64.
ISBN1-55566-193-9.
Further reading
Brunswig, Robert H; Pitblado, Bonnie L. (editors). (2007). Frontiers in Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology, From the Dent Site to the Rocky Mountains. University of Colorado Press.
ISBN978-0-87081-890-5.
Haynes, Gary. (1993). Mammoths, mastodonts, and elephants: biology, behavior, and the fossil record. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN0-521-45691-6.