Will they not have to find at least some human bone fragments in order to make the huge leap into the statement- "Humans in America 40,000 years ago"?
They don't necessarily have to have actual human skeletons. Just unambiguous evidence that humans were involved. Their finding of what looks like cut marks on one of the bones is a step in that direction, but they still have to verify that they are cut marks, not some kind of accidental scrapes or animal gnaw marks. The other thing they have seen is the boulders they found with the bones. They weren't able to come up with a geological explanation of their presence with the bones. So they might have been placed there to weight down the body for storage in the water. That also would imply human activity. Those 2 things tend to indicate that humans were there when the mammoth died.
Before they can definitively say that it was put there by human activity and that it was 40,000 years ago they have more steps. One thing is to get a good date on the skeleton itself. They took a bone sample and sent it to a lab, but the results were inconclusive. So they don't have definite evidence of a human presence 40,00 years ago. And that is why there is a question mark at the end of the subject line.
Anyway they haven't finished analyzing the find yet. They were rushed for time, they were working ahead of a construction project and only had 50 days for the dig. They wrapped up most of the skeleton, what they hadn't dug out already, and the mud surrounding and under it and carted it off to Denver to finish their studies. That will take time, because they won't be rushed by the deadline they had for excavating it. In Denver they will probably take the mud and bones apart practically grain by grain to see what they can find out about it.
Bill Gill
