Dennis L. Jenkins is a research archaeologist, field school supervisor for
the Oregon State Museum of Anthropology/Museum of Natural and Cultural History
at the University of Oregon, and director of the
university's Northern Great
Basin Field School. His archaeological experience spans some 35 years with more
than 100 excavations! His remarkable finds have led to a new accepted date
for earliest human settlement in the Americas.
Dr. Jenkins has found "actual human remains" that pre-date the Clovis
Beringians by over one thousand years! Ancient human coprolites (dried feces)
directly radiocarbon dated to 14,500 years ago have been recovered from
Pleistocene aged deposits containing artifacts and extinct megafaunal remains in
the Paisley 5 Mile Point Caves in south central Oregon. Their human origins
verified by the extraction of ancient DNA, these are currently the oldest
directly dated human remains in the Western Hemisphere. This very unique
site has many kinds of perishable and nonperishable items preserved there. The
evidence indicates the first site occupants were broad-range hunter-gathers well
adapted to the Northern Great Basin’s high desert environment of the late
Pleistocene.
His publications include “Oregon Archaeology” (Oregon State
University Press, 2011), Early and Middle Holocene Archaeology of the
Northern Great Basin (University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 62,
2004), and Archaeological Researches in the Northern Great Basin: Fort Rock
Archaeology Since Cressman (University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 50,
1994) co-authored with C. M. Aikens and T. J. Connolly.
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