Despite the demonstrable stratigraphie context, prominent scientists during the early 20th century, such as the anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, dismissed these human remains from the Vero Beach site as younger, intrusive burials. Although several other important late Pleistocene/early Holocene sites have been found elsewhere in North America with human and extinct faunal association, the Vero Beach site remains significant because of the quality of preservation of the human skeletal remains, and its geographic location in the southeast. More recent attempts to provide age control at Vero, e.g., using direct ¹⁴C dating of associated fossil bones, have so far been unsuccessful, including in this study, almost certainly resulting from diagenesis.
Here we establish the relative ages of the fossils from Vero Beach by comparing the relative uptake of REEs (rare earth elements) during fossilization.
