Oldest Human Footprint in Americas May Be This 15,600-Year-Old Mark in Chile.

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This illustration shows how the ancient footprint may have been made about 15,600 years ago in what is now Chile.
Credit: Mauricio Alvarez Abel
▼ The earliest human footprint on record in the Americas wasn't found in Canada, the United States or even Mexico; it was found much farther south, in Chile, and it dates to an astonishing 15,600 years ago, a new study finds.
The finding sheds light on when humans first reached the Americas, likely by traveling across the Bering Strait land bridge in the midst of the last ice age.
This 10.2-inch-long (26 centimeters) print might even be evidence of pre-Clovis people in South America, the group that came before the Clovis, which are known for their  distinctive spearheads, the researchers said. The find suggests that pre-Clovis people were in northern Patagonia (a region of South America) for some time, as the footprint is older than archaeological evidence from Chile's Monte Verde, a site about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south containing artifacts that are at least 14,500 years old.
Vertebrate paleontologist Leonora Salvadores discovered the footprint in December 2010, when she was an undergraduate student at the Austral University of Chile. At the time, Salvadores and her fellow students were investigating a well-known archaeological site known as Pilauco, which is about 500 miles (820 km) south of Santiago, Chile.

This footprint is about 15,600 years old.
Credit: Laboratorio de Sitio Pilauco, Universidad Austral de Chile
However, it took years for study lead researcher and paleontologist Karen Moreno and study lead investigator and geologist Mario Pino, both at the Austral University of Chile, to verify that the print was human, (▪ ▪ ▪)

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DDG73

This sort of research genuinely blows my mind, like I am aware that we as a species have been on this planet for quite some time,but to see a preserved footprint is something else all together truth be told.

starstuff

DDG73 10-5-2019 07:22 PM
This sort of research genuinely blows my mind, like I am aware that we as a species have been on thi ...

True. Paleontology is one my favourite areas to look forward to everyday in the news apart from space exploration and astronomy.