Source: Zhengguan reporter Zheng Zhongyi
This study of early human footprints provides a more reliable baseline for humans to determine when they will arrive in North America.
The Associated Press reported that in 2009, after people found the first footprints of ancient humans in a dry lake bed in White Sand National Park in New Mexico, they found more footprints in the park. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have been studying and analyzing these footprints to determine their approximate time. On September 23, researchers published a study in the journal Science that the fossil footprints suggest that early humans crossed North America about 23,000 years ago.
The findings could shed light on a long-held mystery that has intrigued scientists: when humans first reached the Americas after dispersing from Africa and Asia.
Most scientists believe that ancient human migration was passed through a now-submerged road bridge that linked Asia to Alaska. These have been proved by stone tools, fossil bones, genetic analysis, etc., and this evidence points to the possible period of human arrival in the Americas between 13,000 and 26,000 years ago.
And this study of early human footprints provides a more reliable baseline for humans to determine when they will arrive in North America. "Fossil footprints are more indisputable and direct evidence than artifacts, bones or other more traditional fossils."
Based on the size of the footprints, the researchers believe that the footprints were made by some children and adolescents who lived during the last ice age.
The researchers say the footprints, made of fine silt and clay, are fragile, so the researchers had to collect samples quickly, "and the only way we saved them was to document them — take a lot of pictures and make 3D models." ”
White Sands National Park in the United States has previously unearthed fossil footprints left by saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, Colombian mammoths and other ice age animals.