California Sea Grant College Program

Anthropologist Terry Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has evidence suggesting prehistoric human hunters drove a flightless duck to extinction about 4,000 years ago. His theory is based on a 10,000-year history of shell and bone refuse, and other remnants of human settlement, excavated in the 1960s during the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County. The refuse is part of what archeologists call a “kitchen midden”–a trash heap showing what people hunted and ate. The Chumash Indians are among the modern descendants of the coastal dwellers represented at the site.