Whether hunting pressure from humans contributed to that extinction on the islands is debated and requires evidence beyond what the Arlington Springs site provides.

The mammoths are mentioned here not because the Arlington Springs individual hunted them — that is undemonstrated — but because they share the same landscape and the same general period, and their presence tells us something about the biological richness of the island that the first humans entered.

Why Early Radiocarbon Dating Had Limits

The decision to preserve the Arlington Springs femora for future analysis rather than consuming them in tests that were not yet adequate was, in retrospect, one of the more consequential archival decisions in the history of American archaeology.

To understand why, it is necessary to understand what radiocarbon dating can and cannot do, and what the science looked like in 1959 and 1962 compared to what it became.