Page 8 - HISTORY ANGKOR

N E W S

MANY SETS OF HUMAN FOOTPRINTS
HAVE BEEN FOUND AT WHITE SANDS
NATIONAL PARK, NEW MEXICO. ONE
GROUP MAY BE 21,000 TO 23,000
YEARS OLD—PUSHING BACK THE
DATE FOR HUMAN HABITATION IN
THE AMERICAS.
PHOTO: DAN ODESS

COLORADO PALEOLITHIC MIGRATION
Were Humans in North

Santa Fe

America Before the Ice Age?
NEW MEXICO

White Sands
National Park
New analysis of fossilized footprints in New Mexico’s White Sands
National Park challenges theories about the peopling of the Americas.
TEXAS
NG MAPS MEXICO

etween 21,000 and astounding: They could be the England, who published their
WHITE SANDS Na-
tional Park, in southern 23,000 years ago, a oldest evidence of human set- study in the journal Science,
New Mexico, is the group of people walked tlement in North America. believe the discovery could
world’s largest gypsum Balong a lakeshore in recalibrate when humans first
dune field, formed what is now White Sands Seeds of Proof began living in North America,
when ancient Lake National Park, New Mexico. Analysis of the footprints one of the biggest questions in
Otero evaporated.
It includes 80,000 The body of water dried up reveals that many belonged paleo-anthropology.
acres layered with about 10,000 years ago, but to teenagers and young chil- The researchers identified
thousands of human their footprints remained. dren. Researchers led by geo- 61 sets of human tracks formed
and animal footprints. A recent study of the foot- scientist Matthew Bennett in soft mud and preserved
prints has revealed something of Bournemouth University, in seven layers. Seeds of an

6 MARCH/APRIL 2022