If it had passed between the ribs and lodged in the chest cavity.

If it had struck muscle and fallen to the ground.

If it had been deflected by the hide before reaching the rib.

If it had penetrated a different part of the animal’s body — the abdomen, the neck, the leg — where the conditions for preservation were different.

In any of these cases, the evidence would have been lost.

The mastodon’s soft tissue, and anything embedded in that soft tissue, would have decomposed within years of the animal’s death, leaving no trace of the event.

The survival of the Manis evidence is a function of a very specific sequence of physical events that led, by chance, to the weapon tip striking bone in such a way that it became incorporated into the bone’s structure and preserved along with it.