Is there any compelling reason to believe other hominids may

>>2971595
not right now

>>2971601
Sad! I want to believe.

>>2971601
what about now?

>>2971595
There's no compelling reason to believe they didn't. And if this study is correct they certainly seem to have.

Sort of but not in the way you probably mean, and not by means of a land bridge. It's pretty well accepted in archaeology at this point that early settlement of North America happened at least 20 thousand years ago, and originally happened via boat travel as people followed marine animals and kelp beds from Asia to North America. There's a pretty fair amount of support for this, including early coastal sites.

As far as the paper referred to in OP, it's probably bullshit. There are a lot of problems with its reasoning, the biggest of which is that there's absolutely no proof that human activity actually occurred at the site. And even if it did, the paper's author's don't argue a convincing reason why it happened, as they firmly state no butchering was present on the bones. So what they really have are a few fairly ordinary rocks with some wear and some broken bones, which weren't necessarily associated with anything. It's not like there were any formal tools, or clear evidence of human usage. For as huge of a paradigm shift as they're asserting, they really didn't make a strong case, and it's just as likely that the bone breakage and stone wear was entirely natural, since there isn't any clear human association. I strongly expect a number of rebuttals and counterarguments to come out over the next few months.