New research strengthens case for age of ancient New Mexico footprints

A new line of evidence is providing further corroboration of the antiquity of fossilized footprints discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico that rewrite the history of humans in the Americas.

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Researchers used a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine that organic matter in the remains of wetland muds and shallow lake sediments near the fossilized foot impressions is between 20,700 and 22,400 years old. That closely correlates to previous findings, based on the age of pollen and seeds at the site, that the tracks are between 21,000 and 23,000 years old.

The footprints, whose discovery was announced in 2021, indicate that humans trod the landscape of North America thousands of years earlier than previously thought, during the most inhospitable conditions of the last Ice Age, a time called the last glacial maximum.