RENO, Nev., Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Archaeologists in Nevada might have located the 150-year-old site of the camp of the Donner Party where cannibalism was suspected.
The site is 30 miles west of Reno and is yielding suspicious bones, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported Wednesday.
Artifacts dug up two weeks ago still are being examined, scientists said, but archaeologists located what might be a campfire pit. They also found a bone fragment of a large mammal that bears the butcher marks of an ax.
The Donner Party traveled across the continent by wagon train in 1846 and the families were trapped in the Sierra Nevada by snowstorms in October and November. Survivors of the ordeal reported that the trapped pioneers at Alder Creek were unable to hunt and survived by eating small animals, boiled leather, and, after several months, the flesh of their companions who died.
About half of the 81-member party perished.
