The Finding Of The Oldest Human Footprints In North America Excited Researchers

Earlier assertions that the fossilized footprints discovered in 2009 in the Lake Otero Basin of New Mexico’s White Sands National Park are the oldest in North America—supposed to date from the last Ice Age—have been refuted by a united team of American experts. The most recent work of the team was published in a recent issue of Quaternary Research.

U.S. scientists conducted study last September. Ruppia cirrhosa seeds embedded in the footprints were radiocarbon-dated by the Geological Survey. Based on their findings, the imprints were likely made between 22,800 and 21,130 years ago. The earliest known humans in North America were previously estimated to have lived between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago. If the conclusion is accurate, it would challenge numerous field presumptions.

The team published its findings in Science last year. “This is a bombshell,” Ruth Gruhn, an academic archaeologist not involved in the study, observed. “It’s very hard to disprove.”

Charles Oviatt, a Kansas State University geologist who helped refute those claims, told Heritage Daily this week that he read the original Science article, “and was initially struck, not only by how tremendous the footprints were on their own, but how important accurate dating would be.”Underwater plants like Ruppia cirrhosa, an underwater ditch grass, can appear much older since they photosynthesize from the water, which frequently holds ancient carbon, rather than in the atmosphere, which would create a more contemporary picture. Last year, researchers acknowledged potential interference due to the “reservoir effect.”

Oviatt coordinated the testing of Ruppia cirrhosa samples kept at the University of New Mexico herbarium with three other scientists from DRI, the University of Nevada, and Oregon State University. They had first been gathered alive from a nearby spring-fed pond in 1947.Leading commercial radiocarbon lab Beta Analytic conducted dating on those archived samples. Results dated the plants as 7,400 years old, “an offset resulting from the use of ancient groundwater by the plant,” Heritage Daily noted. If those results were skewed by 7,400 years, then there’s a chance that footprints at White Sands actually align with existing records.

“While the researchers recognize the problem, they underestimate the basic biology of the plant,” said Rhode. “For the most part, it’s using the carbon it finds in the lake waters. And in most cases, that means it’s taking in carbon from sources other than the contemporary atmosphere—sources which are usually pretty old.”

It’s all just the scientific method at work. “The original investigators went to some lengths to corroborate their claims and I am told they are still working on it,” Rhode told Artnet News. “They have publicly recognized the need for such corroborative evidence to convince the community at large. There is now and will continue to be much more work on this one.”