![]() On this day, however, wind had uncovered a set of unmistakably human prints that ended in a mound of sand. They knew the site harbored ancient seed deposits, but they hadn't yet found human footprints. Then came the fateful day in September 2019 when Bustos and Bennett returned to a bluff in the park they had visited more than a dozen times before. But season after season, their search for a site with both seeds and footprints was unsuccessful. This way scientists can determine the earliest and latest moments in time the horizon of prints were laid down. To securely date a print, researchers must find layers of seeds that can be dated using radiocarbon analysis, below and above layers of footprints. ![]() The park’s surfaces are a palimpsest of crisscrossing trackways that could have been created in separate events thousands of years apart. Pinning down exactly when the track-makers pressed their toes into the mud at White Sands, however, has proven challenging, says study author Matthew Bennett, a geologist at Bournemouth University in England. Many Native American tribes and pueblos feel a spiritual connection to White Sands, and Charlie is part of a committee in the Tribal Historic Preservation Office that's been collaborating with the research team to ensure the prints' preservation. " just gives us goosebumps," Kim Charlie, a member of the Pueblo of Acoma, says of visiting the site. These ephemeral appearances have earned the nickname "ghost tracks." Each footprint marks the place where an ancient relative once stood thousands of years ago. But each find kicks up a firestorm of controversy among scientists. These include the Monte Verde site in Chile that's as old as 18,500 years and the Gault site in Texas that's up to 20,000 years old. ![]() A growing number of discoveries suggest people were in North and South America thousands of years before. These prints are among the oldest evidence of humans in the Americas, marking the latest addition to a growing body of evidence that challenges when and how people first ventured into this unexplored land.Īccording to a paper published today in the journal Science, the footprints were pressed into the mud near an ancient lake at White Sands between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, a time when many scientists think that massive ice sheets walled off human passage into North America.Įxactly when humans populated the Americas has been fiercely debated for nearly a century, and until recently, many scientists maintained this momentous first occurred no earlier than 13,000 years ago. The footprints look like they were left behind just moments ago by a barefoot visitor to New Mexico's White Sands National Park, the amblings of a slightly flat-footed teen, each toe and heel impression crisply defined by a fine ridge of sand.īut this is no tourist track. ![]()
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