In Florida have been found various human remains to which extreme age has been ascribed, sometimes accompanied with objects of human handiwork. Some of these remains are more or less mineralized bones found near Osprey, Manatee county, on the west coast, from 1871 to 1887, and this fossilization has generally been regarded as an important indication of antiquity. The features of the crania, as well as of the other bones, show no material differences from those of recent Florida Indians.
In 1894 and 1906 were discovered remains of what became known as the "Nebraska Loess Man" in the Gilder Mound on a ridge above the Missouri river, so miles north of Omaha. These remains, some of them accompanied with crude flint im plements and chips, were found at varying depths, those below 41 feet, to a depth of I feet below the surface (the lowermost 5 feet, however, containing only scattered fragments of bone), being regarded by the explorers as contemporaneous with the loess formation and antedating the hill itself. Subsequent investi gation of the site and of the skeletal materials therefrom seemed convincing that, regardless of their depth and the apparently undisturbed condition of the loess in which most of the remains were found, there is no substantial ground for belief in any considerable difference in the age of the upper and the lower bones; that the appearance of knife-marks on bones from both the superficial and the deeper layers suggest a custom such as post-mortem cleaning of the bones of the dead for secondary burial that could hardly have occurred at such remote periods as claimed, and that the many fragments of bones found deepest in the loess might well have been the result of the burrowing of rodents, evidences of which were present.
From an asphalt pit on Rancho La Brea, near Los Angeles, California, have been taken a vast number of bones of animals of the Quaternary period, and in 1914 widespread interest was aroused by the recovery therefrom of considerable parts of a human female skeleton. Although in such close association with the extinct animal remains, the human skull bears no features that mark it as other than that of an ordinary California Indian.
In 1913-1916 there were found at Vero, Florida, various vertebrate, invertebrate and plant fossils of Pleistocene age, together with fossilized human remains accompanied with imple ments and chipped flints, all in such association as to establish the basis of a claim of incontestable evidence of contemporaneity. Thus did the "Fossil Man of Vero" become widely exploited. The primary observations were made entirely from a geological point of view; subsequently other geologists, as well as anthropol ogists, investigated the site, and a thorough study of the skeletal remains for the first time was later made by Hrdliela, who, after examining the conditions under which they were deposited, was convinced that the burials were intentionally made in the fossil-bearing deposits long after the extinction of the animal species whose bones were found in association.
In 1924 remains of several human skeletons were found within an area of 12 square feet and at a depth of 19 to 23 feet, in excavation for an outfall sewer near Los Angeles, California. Fortunately it was possible to make scientific observations on the spot immediately, and by study of the local geological condi tions it became evident that the presence of the osseous material, rather than being washed in, was due to miring under bog condi tions, presumably prior to the accumulation of the greater portion of the deposits that overlay the human remains. No indication of Pleistocene or of recent mammals was found in association. The conclusions reached by Professor Stock were that the evi dence did not point unequivocally to Pleistocene age of the deposits containing the human material, but that they might well be measured in terms of thousands of years, but not neces sarily tens of thousands.
In 1923-1924 the nearly complete and articulated skeleton of a Pleistocene bison was found on Lone Wolf creek, near Colorado, Mitchell county, Texas, embedded in an indurated matrix of cemented sands, gravels and clays, beneath which were two thin, well-chipped, flint projectile points and part of another. In 1925 an almost identical discovery was made in the bank of an arroyo near Folsom, New Mexico, the two implements there found in direct association with fossil bison being even finer examples of chipping than those which came from Texas. The excavations at Folsom are still in progress. These two interesting discov eries are quite comparable, so far as the circumstances are yet known, to the finding of a somewhat cruder spear-point, like wise found in connection with a fossil bison, at Russell Springs, Logan county, Kansas, in 1895. Again, in 1926, near Frederick, Tillman county, Oklahoma, there were reported to have been found, near the base of a great hilltop gravel and sand deposit, ro to 25 feet in thickness, in a stratum containing fossil verte brates and beneath a layer of sandstone, a chipped flint spear point, together with two stones described as "pestles or grinding instruments," which were not regarded as of sufficient importance to preserve. Above the sandstone, in partially cemented sand, gravel, and pebbles, 9 to 15 feet thick and likewise containing fossils, a flint drill-point was found. In the same stratum, 8 feet beneath mammoth remains, were unearthed five specimens of what were identified as metates, or mealing slabs, of sandstone. No human skeletal remains were anywhere present. Mr. Harold J. Cook regards these artifacts as earlier representatives of Pleistocene man than those found in Texas and New Mexico, which follow in order in point of age; he believes that the Fred erick deposits are of early Pleistocene age, probably Aftonian.