21,000-yr-old Footprints in New Mexico may be the oldest evidence of human migration in the Americas
Last Updated: Oct 06, 2023, 09:44 AM IST
The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.
The reported age of the footprints challenges the once-conventional wisdom that humans didn't reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.
New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are likely the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew about when our ancestors arrived in the New World. The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Science.
The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake - which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.
More:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/21000-yr-old-footprints-in-new-mexico-may-be-the-oldest-evidence-of-human-migration-in-the-americas/articleshow/104202386.cms
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October 7, 20235:00 AM ET
By Alice Fordham
Scientists studying fossil human footprints in New Mexico say their age implies that humans arrived in North America earlier than thought.
NPS Photo
How long have humans lived on the American continent?
For decades, one prevailing answer was perhaps 14,000 years, based largely on the age of early human stone tools known as Clovis points, first discovered in Clovis, NM.
But a new analysis of fossilized human footprints adds weight to the case for a longer human history in the Americas.
The footprints are among thousands made by humans, mammoths, giant sloths and others in White Sands National Park, an ethereal landscape in southern New Mexico where waves of white gypsum dunes lap across the vast Tularosa basin.
That basin held a lake during the last Ice Age, and its dried-out banks preserve the prints.
. . .
The overlapping tracks – and timeline – of humans and megafauna also opened new questions about how long the species coexisted, and what role humans might or might not have played in their extinction.
More:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/07/1204031535/fossil-footprints-in-new-mexico-suggest-humans-have-been-here-longer-than-we-tho
maybe they lost one or the 2 smallest were real close to each other to make it look like one.
