Comments on: 'An anthropogenic modification in an Eremotherium tooth from northeastern Brazil'

摘要

Over 150 years ago, Peter W. Lund proposed that late Quaternary extinct megafauna (henceforth just megafauna) and Homo sapiens coexisted in Brazil (Lund, 1844), but only recently his hypothesis was supported by direct radiocarbon dating on megafauna bones (Neves and Pilo, 2003; Hubbe et al., 2007, 2009, 2011). These dates showed that in some Brazilian regions, at least some species survived until the beginning of the Holocene and became extinct after the arrival of the first human groups. Besides the chronolog ical evidence which indicates that humans and megafauna lived in the same region at the same time, there are also claims that they may have interacted more actively based on the finding of single (or very few) bones or bone fragments associated with human occu pation levels, near archeological material, or showing marks that suggest their usage by humans. However, based on the meticulous revision provided by Prous (2002) it is possible to rule out most of these cases due to their controversial nature. In fact, few of those, if any, can be held as solid evidence of this close interaction (not considering scavenging on bones from a long ago deceased animal; Prous and Fogaca, 1999).