Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico

Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico

WASHINGTON — Fossilized footprints found in New Mexico point out that early people have been strolling throughout North America round 23,000 years in the past, researchers reported Thursday.

The primary footprints have been present in a dry lake mattress in White Sands Nationwide Park in 2009. Scientists on the U.S. Geological Survey just lately analyzed seeds caught within the footprints to find out their approximate age, starting from round 22,800 and 21,130 years in the past.

The findings might make clear a thriller that has lengthy intrigued scientists: When did individuals first arrive within the Americas, after dispersing from Africa and Asia?

Most scientists imagine historical migration got here by the use of a now-submerged land bridge that related Asia to Alaska. Based mostly on varied proof — together with stone instruments, fossil bones and genetic evaluation — different researchers have supplied a spread of potential dates for human arrival within the Americas, from 13,000 to 26,000 years in the past or extra.

The present examine offers a extra strong baseline for when people positively have been in North America, though they may have arrived even earlier, the authors say. Fossil footprints are extra indeniable and direct proof than “cultural artifacts, modified bones, or different extra typical fossils,” they wrote within the journal Science, which revealed the examine Thursday.

“What we current right here is proof of a agency time and placement,” they stated.

Based mostly on the dimensions of the footprints, researchers imagine that not less than some have been made by youngsters and youngsters who lived over the last ice age.

David Bustos, the park’s useful resource program supervisor, noticed the primary footprints in historical wetlands in 2009. He and others discovered extra within the park over time.

“We knew they have been previous, however we had no strategy to date the prints earlier than we found some with (seeds) on prime,” he stated Thursday.

Fabricated from nice silt and clay, the footprints are fragile, so the researchers needed to work shortly to assemble samples, Bustos stated.

“The one approach we will save them is to report them — to take a variety of images and make 3D fashions,” he stated.

Earlier excavations in White Sands Nationwide Park have uncovered fossilized tracks left by a saber-toothed cat, dire wolf, Columbian mammoth and different ice age animals.

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