Fossil footprints: the longest known prehistoric journey

From the paper Walking in mud: Remarkable Pleistocene human trackways from White Sands National Park (New Mexico) [1]:

> We describe a long prehistoric human trackway (1.5 km) of Late Pleistocene age at White Sands National Park (New Mexico, USA).

> The trackway indicates two journeys. The outbound tracks are crosscut by giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth tracks.

> The precise geochronology of the tracks remains uncertain... The most parsimonious interpretation of this window is that track formation occurred before 10 k BP, however the upper biostratigraphic limit depends on the arrival date for human colonisers in the Americas and more specifically at WHSA [White Sands].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...

"What’s more, research yet to be published tells of children playing in puddles formed in giant sloth tracks, jumping between mammoth tracks and of hunting and butchery."

This is a delightful image! I hope this research stands up to review.

>what is even more remarkable is that they followed their own trackway home again a few hours later. [...] Between the outward and return journeys, a sloth and a mammoth crossed the outward trackway. The footprints of the return journey in turn cross those animal tracks.

a crowded place it was.

I am surprised that such an important development is not being comment on on HN. Considering how mental health affects fellow techies, this should be as impactful a development as real time glucose level tracking for diabetics.