Bone may display oldest art in Americas

Mammoth engraved on fossil may date from at least 13,000 year ago

An engraving of an Ice Age mammoth on a fossil bone possibly represents the oldest drawing in the Americas. Mammoths disappeared from eastern North America 13,000 years ago, so the etching must be at least that old, says a team led by anthropologist Robert Speakman of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute in Suitland, Md.