File:Hebiormammoth.jpg

English: What is the Hebior Mammoth and Why Is It Important?

This is one of the most widely known mammoths in the world, with skeletal casts like this one exhibited in museums from Florida to Alaska. But only the Milwaukee Public Museum owns the original bones on which such casts are based. Excavated in 1994 in northern Kenosha County, WI, just 30 miles south of the museum, the Hebior Mammoth is noteworthy both for its size and completeness. A majority of the bones were molded to produce the replicas that have since spread far and wide.

Beyond its importance as a major fossil, the Hebior Mammoth holds even greater significance as a star player in one of the great research questions and debates in New World archaeology - the first arrival of humans in the Americas. The long predominant "Clovis First" theory maintains that the Clovis culture, dated no earlier than 13,000 years ago, represents the first people to migrate to the Americas.

Found with a variety of human-made cut marks and the stone tools that almost certainly made them, and radiocarbon dated on bone collagen to 14,500 years ago, the Hebior Mammoth is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for a pre-Clovis human occupation in North America. Debate will doubtless continue, but for now the Hebior, along with other mammoth and mastodon finds from Kenosha County, places southeastern Wisconsin at the center of one of American archaeology's greatest controversies.