In a remote desert corner of Sonora, Mexico, the site of El Fin del Mundo offers the first recorded evidence of Paleoindian interactions with gomphotheres, an extinct species related to elephants. The Clovis occupation of North America is the oldest generally accepted and well-documented archaeological assemblage on the continent. This site in Sonora, Mexico, is the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. It is the first documented intact buried Clovis site outside of the United States, the first in situ Paleoindian site in northwestern Mexico, and the first documented evidence of Clovis gomphothere hunting in North America. The site also includes an associated upland Clovis campsite. This volume also describes a paleontological bone bed below the Clovis level, which includes a rare association of mastodon, mammoth, and gomphothere.

El Fin del Mundo presents and synthesizes the archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records of an important Clovis site.

Contributors

JoaquÍn Arroyo-Cabrales

Jordan Bright

James K. Feathers

Edmund P. Gaines

Thanairi Gamez

Gregory W. L. Hodgins

Vance T. Holliday

Susan M. Mentzer

Carmen Isela Ortega-Rosas

Manuel R. Palacios-Fest

Guadalupe SÁnchez

Ismael SÁnchez-Morales

Kayla B. Worthey

Kristen Wroth