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Mexican Footprints: Not Likely
Earlier this year some scientists claimed to have found footprints preserved in Mexico dating to 40,000 years ago. These would pre-date the accepted dates for the first humans in America by over 20,000 years.
A brief report in this week's Nature casts doubt on the footprints. Using two dating techniques, including argon isotope analysis, the actual volcanic ash that the supposed footprints were preserved in dated to 1.3 million years ago. This date pre-dates the earliest Homo sapien fossils (found in Africa) by over a million years. Apparently the first group of scientists used carbon dating on material above the footprints, which is not reliable past 40,000 years.
It is formally possible that the footprints were those of an early Homo species, but without further evidence it is considered unlikely. These authors conclude that most likely, they are not really footprints.
news@nature.com summary
2 comments:
And I thought this was going to be about "Footprints in the Sand". Find out who created that poem and that would be newsworthy.
That would be interesting if there was another version of homo sapiens in the Americas. It would seem then that the possibility would exist that population of the Americas could be more than simply a result of migrations.
"Footprints" was written in 1936 by Mary Stephenson.
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