Ancient Footprints Yield Surprising New Clues About the First Americans

At the peak of the past Ice Age, generations of children and young people ambled barefoot alongside a muddy lakefront in what is now New Mexico, crossing paths with mammoths, giant ground sloths and an extinct canine species recognized as dire wolves.

Now, some 23,000 years later on, the younger people’s fossilized footprints are yielding new insights into when individuals 1st populated the Americas. Unearthed in White Sands Countrywide Park by a research staff that started its do the job in 2016, the tracks are about 10,000 years older and about 1,600 miles farther south than any other human footprints recognized in The usa, scientists described Thursday in the journal Science.