The re-dating produced a much younger age, and the interpretation of the modification as human-made was not confirmed under more rigorous scrutiny.

The Old Crow specimen, once among the most discussed evidence for early human presence in eastern Beringia, was effectively removed from the pre-Clovis evidence list.

The Old Crow story is relevant to the Bluefish Caves story in two ways.

First, it illustrates exactly the kind of methodological failure — initial overconfident claims, followed by reanalysis that did not support those claims — that made the archaeological community skeptical of new claims for early human presence in eastern Beringia.

The “Clovis first” establishment had seen too many spectacular early dates collapse under scrutiny, and the skepticism that greeted Cinq-Mars’s Bluefish Caves claims was partly the product of the disappointment over Old Crow and other sites that had not held up.