Enlarge / This illustration reveals what the shore of historical Lake Otero could have appeared like 21,000 years in the past.
Folks actually had been strolling round within the southwestern US through the center of the final Ice Age, in accordance with a current research that double-checked the dates on a set of surprisingly historical human footprints at White Sands Nationwide Park.
Many hundreds of years in the past, somebody walked alongside the muddy shore of an historical lake at what’s now White Sands. They crushed ditchgrass seeds and grains of conifer pollen beneath their ft with each squishing, slippery step. Bournemouth College archaeologist Matthew Bennett and his colleagues (together with the authors of the present research) unearthed eight layers of tracks on the website in early 2020; they radiocarbon-dated the ditchgrass seeds from the oldest layer of footprints to 23,000 years previous and the youngest layer to round 21,000 years previous.
Their 2021 paper sparked instant debate.
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