Other animal bones were present.

There was plant material.

And there were other tantalizing hints — fragmentary and disputed for years — that the Manis site might have been more than just a place where a large animal happened to die and become buried by natural processes.

But the central piece of evidence — the one that would define the Manis site’s scientific importance for the next four and a half decades — was a single rib.

Why One Rib Changed The Site