Scientists from Utah and Nevada completed a six-day excavation on June 12, at the United Nations "world heritage site." University of Utah professor Jesse Jennings discovered the cave and analyzed artifacts and soil layers from 1949-1953.
With new technologies scientists in the region are now trying to expand on Jennings's findings to see how adaptive humans and plants were to rapid changes in climate.
"To undertake a project like this at that time would be to most people just overwhelming," said archaeologist Tom Jones of Hamilton College in New York. "But today, everybody who takes an archaeology course in college knows of this site and what he did for archaeology here."