The comparison helped to establish that the Manis point was a functional weapon tip of a type consistent with the broader tradition of osseous hunting implements in the Americas.

It was not unique in its basic concept — bone points were made in other parts of the world and probably in other parts of the early Americas.

What was unique was the combination of its age, its location, and the direct evidence of its use: the fact that it was not found in a deposit or a cache but inside the rib of the animal it had been used against.

The morphological comparison also helped to address one of the alternative explanations for the embedded material: the possibility that the fragments were natural bone pieces that had somehow become lodged in the rib through non-human processes.