Eyed or holed sewing needles used during the Younger Dryas period were made from the bones of bears, birds, bison, caribou, fish, and foxes, as well as ivory.
Notes on verification
Core claim matches Osborn's 2014 American Antiquity study and is corroborated by multiple peer-reviewed site studies (Tule Lake, Paisley/Connley Caves, La Prele). Most listed materials (bear, bird, bison, fox, ivory) are independently confirmed across sources; caribou specifically was not directly verified in North American contexts within the search, though plausible given Eurasian parallels.
Sources
- Sewing Saved Us from a "Cold Snap" 13 Thousand Years Ago (daily.jstor.org)
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/eye-of-the-needle-cold-stress-clothing-and-sewing-technology-during-the-younger-dryas-cold-event-in-north-america/7585D812F664EAE29DF9EEA9E5A473EA (cambridge.org)
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5FFC6A4D2B17B8C72B0AB21DB91CB68E/S0002731600002365a.pdf/eyed-bone-needles-from-a-younger-dryas-paleoindian-component-at-tule-lake-rock-shelter-northern-california.pdf (cambridge.org)
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0313610 (journals.plos.org)
- https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/ice-age-in-the-great-basin/ (oregonencyclopedia.org)
- https://www.aol.com/archaeologists-discover-key-tool-helped-191636031.html (aol.com)