Luminescence dating pushes age of South Dakota's Mammoth Site back by more than 100,000 years

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Add as preferred source Modern analog showing how the Mammoth Site sinkhole might have looked. Credit: Shannon Mahan Deep within an ancient sinkhole lie the remains of dozens of mammoths, prehistoric wanderers who waded into the warm springs to their deaths. These deaths had long been accepted as having occurred roughly 26,000 years ago, but new dates published in the journal Quaternary Research suggest these ice-age giants were more than 160,000 years old .

More than 60 mostly young male Columbian mammoths have been found at Mammoth Site in South Dakota since its discovery in 1974, the largest concentration in North America.