South America

A new discovery in Uruguay has possibly pushed the earliest evidence for human presence in South America back by thousands of years. Scientists studying a 33,000-year-old heel bone from a giant ground sloth have discovered what looks like trauma from a human-made weapon, suggesting that ancient hunters were pursuing megafauna long before the Last Glacial Maximum. The fossil belonged to extinct giant ground sloth Lestodon armatus, and was found at the Arroyo del Vizcaíno site, located near Sauce, Uruguay. The bone has one clearly defined circular indentation that's approximately 0.8 inches (21 millimeters) in diameter and nearing 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) in depth. This cone-shaped wound has features that suggest it could only have been produced by a penetrating weapon