But the object makes the science meaningful in a different way: it keeps the science anchored to a physical reality, a specific moment, a specific animal and a specific human action, rather than allowing the scientific analysis to become abstract and disconnected from the event it is trying to understand.

A radiocarbon date is a number.

A CT scan is an image.

A protein analysis is a mass spectrum.

A 3D reconstruction is a digital model.

All of these are representations of something that was real — a living mastodon, a human hunter, a weapon, an impact, a death — and the rib is what makes that reality tangible.

Without the rib, the numbers and images and spectra are information without a referent.

With the rib, they are the documentation of a moment from the Ice Age that chance preserved and science eventually read.