The longest known prehistoric journey

[Still Waters 49,999]

Quote

Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead – but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you.

That is the story the longest trackway of fossil footprints in the world tells us. Our new discovery, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, comes from White Sands National Park in New Mexico, US, and was made by an international team working in collaboration with staff from the National Park Service.

The footprints were spotted in a dried-up lakebed known as a playa, which contains literally hundreds of thousands of footprints dating from the end of the last ice age (about 11,550 years ago) to sometime before about 13,000 years ago.

Unlike many other known footprint trackways, this one is remarkable for its length – over at least 1.5km – and straightness. This individual did not deviate from their course. But what is even more remarkable is that they followed their own trackway home again a few hours later.

https://theconversation.com/fossil-footprints-the-fascinating-story-behind-the-longest-known-prehistoric-journey-147520

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379120305722?dgcid=author

[Taun 19,962]

Obviously they were going for take out.

[third_eye 47,719]

28 minutes ago, Taun said:

Obviously they were going for take out.

Obviously not Chinese... 

~

[Taun 19,962]

2 hours ago, third_eye said:

Obviously not Chinese... 

~

I use to live at White Sands (Missile Range) - definitely Tex-Mex.

[Eldorado 52,178]

A small woman—or perhaps an adolescent boy—walks quickly across a landscape where giant beasts roam. The person holds a toddler on their hip, and their feet slip in the mud as they hurry along for nearly a mile, perhaps delivering the child to a safe destination before returning home alone.

Despite the fact that this journey took place more than 10,000 years ago, a new paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews manages to sketch out what it might have looked and felt like in remarkable detail.

Full article at the Smithsonian Mag: Link

[the13bats 10,140]

So in this pic,

Were these people wearing outfits like that?

[Eldorado 52,178]

2 hours ago, the13bats said:

So in this pic,

Were these people wearing outfits like that?

https://www.ushistory.org/civ/2b.asp

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/climate-clothing-and-agriculture-in-prehistory/technology-of-paleolithic-clothes/0119410EB5A9F56F06437DC1235B2B85/core-reader

Edited October 19 by Eldorado