Human footprint fossil6/9/2023 ![]() ![]() The ground was wet and slick with mud and they were walking at speed, which would have been exhausting. M Bennett, Bournemouth University., Author providedĮach track tells a story: a slip here, a stretch there to avoid a puddle. Left Panel: One of the tracks with little slippage. Central Panel: Child tracks in the middle of nowhere. Outward and homeward journeys following each other. But what is even more remarkable is that they followed their own trackway home again a few hours later.Ī section of the double trackway. This individual did not deviate from their course. ![]() Unlike many other known footprint trackways, this one is remarkable for its length – over at least 1.5km – and straightness. ![]() The footprints were spotted in a dried-up lakebed known as a playa, which contains literally hundreds of thousands of footprints dating from the end of the last ice age (about 11,550 years ago) to sometime before about 13,000 years ago. Our new discovery, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, comes from White Sands National Park in New Mexico, US, and was made by an international team working in collaboration with staff from the National Park Service. That is the story the longest trackway of fossil footprints in the world tells us. Now add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead – but you cannot stop now.
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