Stone tools and the teeth of an extinct camel and bison discovered in central Oregon show that people were living in North America 18,250 years ago, new research finds. Although this is not the earliest date for human occupation of the Americas that has been proposed, the finding, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed study, appears to be thousands of years older than any other archaeological site in Oregon.
Archaeologists made the discovery at the site of Rimrock Draw, which includes a rock shelter that researchers have been excavating since 2011 under a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management. Initial investigations found stone tools from the Paleo-Indian period (15000 B.C. to 7000 B.C.), but the geology of the site suggested that there were sediment layers dating to even earlier.
