Fossil footprints found in New Mexico suggest humans existed long before we think


Fossil footprints found in New Mexico suggest humans existed long before we think© Provided by The Times of India


NEW DELHI: Recent findings from a comprehensive analysis of fossilized human footprints are challenging the long-held belief that humans arrived in the Americas around 14,000 years ago, primarily based on the discovery of Clovis points, early stone tools first found in Clovis, New Mexico, reported NPR.

These footprints are part of a collection found in White Sands National Park, a striking natural landscape in southern New Mexico, characterised by vast gypsum dunes in the Tularosa basin. During the last Ice Age, this basin contained a lake, and the prints were preserved on its now-dry shores.

In 2021, a research team comprising experts from the National Park Service, the US Geological Survey, and others published a paper in the journal Science, presenting a controversial estimate that these footprints date back to a much earlier period, specifically between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago.

The discovery challenges the conventional timeline of human arrival in the Americas and has sparked significant debate among researchers.

"These ages were really much older than the accepted paradigm of when humans entered North America," Kathleen Springer, one of the US Geological Survey researchers who wrote the report was quoted as saying by NPR.

Video: 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Found With Its Internal Anatomy Intact (Amaze Lab)  Duration 1:17  View on Watch

She said scientists had "thought humans might have crossed from what is now Siberia to Alaska toward the end of the last Ice Age," reported NPR.

"But if her team's analysis of the footprints was correct, maybe that was wrong, and humans found a way onto the continent even when its northern lands were still ice-bound. It opens up whole avenues of migratory pathways. How did people get here?" she added.

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.

Critics raised concerns about the research, suggesting that the dating technique used was flawed. Another paper published in Science argued that carbon dating of seeds from the aquatic plant Ruppia cirrhosa, found alongside the footprints, could be unreliable due to the plant's ability to absorb older carbon from water, potentially skewing the results.

"I unfortunately don't share their conclusions that they have resolved the issue of timing of when people were making these footprints," Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University who co-authored the critical paper last year was quoted as saying by NPR.

According to NPR, has contested that "samples of quartz came from the lowest deposit of the study area, and that the possible age range is broad. He also said that the sample was less useful because it was taken from a clay layer, that does not have footprints embedded in it".