Footprints record certain types of evidence that most people can’t get from other types of archaeological or fossil records, says Kevin Hatala, a paleoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. says there is. he was not involved in the discovery.
“You can see how big these individuals were,” says Hatala. “You can understand how they were moving. When you see multiple trackways of footprints within the same site, you can start to understand how many people could have been there.” increase.”
“Could they have traveled together or traveled differently?” he added.
Fossils could also provide important insights into current populations, says Daron Duke, principal investigator and archaeologist with the Nevada-based Far Western Anthropology Study Group.
“It also connects the finds to the ancestral people of the area,” he said.
accidental discovery
According to Duke and Tommy Urban, research scientists at Cornell University in New York, the discovery was somewhat accidental.
Duke and Urban scoured the Utah Test and Training Range in early July looking for the remains of a deliberate prehistoric campfire used by ancient humans as a source of light and heat. As they were driving around the air force base and talking about what the fossilized footprints looked like, Urban noticed one of his and stopped to examine the footprints. After further investigation, they identified dozens more in the area.
At first, they weren’t sure that the footprints were made by humans. Archaeologists continue to work to confirm the age of the footprints by radiocarbon dating, but the age of the footprints underlies the previously dated sedimentary layers, and is largely the work of a child. Based on the fact that the footprints were exposed on the surface around the same time, we believe the footprints are 12,000 years old. Artifacts that turned out to be 12,300 years old, said Duke.
Furthermore, the freshwater wetlands needed to preserve the prints have not existed in the area for at least 10,000 years.
“I was so excited when I realized that[the Utah truck]was a barefoot human footprint,” Urban said in an email. “I’ve been doing footprint research at White Sands for the past five years, so it was amazing to think we’d made it to a second White Sands.”
In the future, researchers will need to preserve and protect Utah’s prints and find out who they belonged to and when exactly they came from, Duke said.
distant relationship
David Madsen, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the find was exciting for the field of archaeological research. he was not involved in the discovery.
“Now that we have this human element, the story of very early people becomes much more real. said Madsen.
The proximity of the sites and the fact that the evidence is likely from the same period tells archaeologists an even bigger story about the people who may have lived in the area during the Ice Age. said Duke.
In addition, learning more about printmaking may enhance our understanding of the indigenous peoples of the western United States.
There are 21 indigenous communities in the area, and people from these communities are helping researchers examine footprints.
Source: www.cnn.com
