Humans lived on America 130,000 yrs ago

​Los Angeles: Humans may have inhabited the Americas about 115,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new study has found.

Archaeologists discovered preserves of 130,000-year-old bones and teeth of a mastodon - an ancient extinct relative of elephants - in California, US, that show evidence of modification by early humans.

Analysis of these finds dramatically revises the time- line for when humans first reached North America. "This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World," said Judy Gradwohl, president of the San Diego Natural History Museum, whose paleontology team discovered the fossils.

"The evidence we found at this site indicates that some hominin species was living in North America 115,000 years earlier than previously thought," said Gradwohl.

Until recently, the oldest records of human sites in North America generally accepted by archaeologists were about 14,000 years old.

However, the new fossils were found embedded in fine- grained sediments that had been deposited much earlier, during a period long before humans were thought to have arrived on the continent.

Since its initial discovery in 1992, this site has been the subject of research by top scientists to date the fossils accurately and evaluate microscopic damage on bones and rocks that researchers now consider indicative of human activity.