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Dent Site is a Clovis culture (about 11,000 years before present) site located in Weld County, Colorado, near Milliken, Colorado. It provided evidence that man and mammoth co-existed in the Americas.
Contents
The site is located on an alluvial fan alongside the South Platte River.
Discovery
Following a period of heavy rainfall and flooding in 1932, Frank Garner, Union Pacific Railroad employee, discovered large animal bones that were exposed near the Dent railroad station. The Dent Site, in Weld County, Colorado, was a fossil mammoth 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.
Clovis culture
The Clovis culture (about 13,300 - 12,900 calendar years before present) 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.
Mammoth bones
Mammoth bones and what were later called Clovis points 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. 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.