Via ScienceDaily: A new and astonishing chapter has been added to North American prehistory in regards to the first hunters and their hunt for the now extinct giant mammoth-like creatures -- the mastodons. [...] This new study concludes that the first-known hunters in North America can now be dated back at least 14,000 years.

The article abstract: The tip of a projectile point made of mastodon bone is embedded in a rib of a single disarticulated mastodon at the Manis site in the state of Washington. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis show that the rib is associated with the other remains and dates to 13,800 years ago. Thus, osseous projectile points, common to the Beringian Upper Paleolithic and Clovis, were made and used during pre-Clovis times in North America. The Manis site, combined with evidence of mammoth hunting at sites in Wisconsin, provides evidence that people were hunting proboscideans at least two millennia before Clovis.

• Waters, Michael R., Thomas W. Stafford, H. Gregory McDonald, Carl Gustafson, Morten Rasmussen, Enrico Cappellini, Jesper V. Olsen, et al. 2011. “Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunting 13,800 Years Ago at the Manis Site, Washington.” Science 334 (6054) (October 21): 351-353.
• Lawler, Andrew. 2011. “Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunters Make a Point.” Science 334 (6054) (October 21): 302.
• First North American Hunters 1,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought, Speared Mastodon Fossil Shows, ScienceDaily 20 October 2011.