Source: China News Network
San Francisco, September 24 (China News Service) Researchers reported on the 23rd local time that the footprint fossils found in New Mexico in the United States show that about 23,000 years ago, early humans had arrived in North America.
The New York Times reported that in 2009, David Bustos, a resource program manager at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, first spotted the footprints on a dry lake bed in the park. He brought in an international team of scientists to study the findings. Together, they have found thousands of human footprints on 80,000 acres of the park over the years.
Recently, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed the seeds left in the footprints to determine the approximate age of the footprints. Scientists believe that these footprints were produced between about 21130 and 22800 years ago. NBC reported that the study's participant, Cornell University archaeologist Thomas Urban, said the footprints, mixed with animal footprints, suggested people must have lived there for at least 2,000 years.
A research article published in the journal Science on the 23rd said that footprint fossils are more indisputable and direct evidence than cultural relics, bones or other more conventional fossils. "What we're showing here is evidence that can reflect when and where the time and place were identified," the researchers said. ”
Based on its size, the researchers believe that at least some of the footprints were left by children and adolescents who lived during the last ice age. Bustos said these fossil footprints, made up of fine silt and clay, are fragile, so researchers must quickly collect samples.
Earlier, during excavations in White Sands National Park, researchers also found fossil footprints left by saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, Colombian mammoths and other ice age animals.
NBC reports that there has long been debate that humans arrived in the Americas via the Continental Bridge from Siberia before or after the "last glacial boom" (the last glacial boom in geological history). For decades, many archaeologists insisted that humans did not spread in the Americas until the end of the last ice age. They note that the oldest known tool in North America dates back about 13,000 years. Matthew Bennett, a major participant in the study and a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at the University of Bournemouth in the United Kingdom, said ancient footprints in White Sands National Park suggest that humans may have reached the Americas 30,000 years ago, thousands of years before the peak of the last ice age. (End)