More on 40,000 BC Mexico Footprints


The second story below questions the finding and has photos
Mike Ruggeri
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/05/wfoot05.xml&s***=/news/2005/07/05/ixworld.html
40,000-year-old footprint of first Americans By Roger Highfield,
Science Editor (Filed: 05/07/2005) A plastic replica of a
40,000-year-old, size eight foot has shattered previous theories of the
identity of the first humans to walk in the Americas. Scientists made
the foot from tracks left on the shore of an ancient volcanic lake in
central Mexico. 'The footprints were preserved as trace fossils in
volcanic ash' The traditional view is that the first settlers walked
across the Bering Strait, from Russia to Alaska, at the end of the last
ice age around 11,500 to 11,000 years ago. But the discovery of
footprints in the Valsequillo Basin by a British-led team provides new
evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000 years
ago, suggesting that there were several migration waves at different
times by different groups. The team, led by Dr Silvia Gonzalez from
Liverpool John Moores University, has completed dating the footprints,
which Dr Gonzalez found in an abandoned quarry with her Liverpool
colleague Prof David Huddart and Prof Matthew Bennett, of Bournemouth
University, in September 2003. The findings supported the theory that
the first colonists might have been seafarers who took an "island
hopping" route from Australia and Polynesia, when sea levels were lower,
to the west coast, said Prof Bennett. "There was a lot of sea ice at
this time in the northern Pacific. People could have come around on the
edge of the sea ice and then down the western seaboard of North America
to Baja California and to Mexico," he said. The first stage of their
research, on show this week at the Royal Society in London, analysed 269
footprints, both animal and human. DNA tests are being conducted on the
remains of ancient Americans to see if genetics can help to solve the
puzzle. New funding of £212,000 from the Natural Environment Research
Council will allow the team to carry out more extensive investigations
and to calculate the height, pace and stride of the human population
present 40,000 years ago. "The footprints were preserved as trace
fossils in volcanic ash along what was the shoreline of an ancient
volcanic lake," said Dr Gonzalez. They were scanned using laser
technology and reproduced using rapid prototyping technology.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050704/full/050704-4.html Ancient
'footprints' found in Mexico Rex Dalton Find may push back dates of when
people arrived in the Americas. Could this be a footprint from 40,000
years ago? Silvia Gonzalez Researchers think they may have found
footprints in southern Mexico that mark the oldest evidence for the
presence of humans in the Americas. The impressions, preserved in
volcanic ash outside the city of Puebla, have been dated to about 40,000
years ago, beating the oldest accepted evidence of humans in the
Americas by some 25,000 years. If proven, the prints would lend support
to controversial theories that people reached this land much earlier
than previously thought. The researchers themselves say more work needs
to be done to confirm that they have found the mark of human steps. "I
believe they are footprints," says geoarchaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of
Liverpool John Moores University, UK, who is originally from Mexico.
"But we are being cautious, as we need to do more work." Gonzalez
reported the discovery on 4 July at the Royal Society's Summer Science
Exhibition in London. Long-distant runners A path of 'prints' in the ash
field of an ancient volcanic eruption. Silvia Gonzalez The team first
stumbled on the prints in the summer of 2003 while hiking between
archaeological sites near the dried bed of Valsequillo Lake. They found
an ash field peppered with more than 200 impressions that seem to be
footprints from several people, including children, along with birds,
cats, dogs and species with cloven feet. Gonzalez thinks they might have
been fleeing an eruption from the nearby Cerro Toluquilla volcano. The
prints are plainly exposed and in an area that sees traffic in
everything from miners who quarry the ash to recreational cyclists. Some
worry that human interference, along with heavy rains, might have acted
to make the impressions that now look like footprints. Thomas Higham of
the University of Oxford, UK, used radiocarbon dating on shells in
sediments just above the layer of ash and found they were about 40,000
years old. Early arrival The prevailing theory is that people first
migrated from northern Asia between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago,
crossing to America over a land bridge at the Bering Strait. But
controversial genetic analyses of Native American populations indicate
that some immigrants may have arrived much earlier than that, up to
40,000 years ago. That predates the ice age that held much of North
America in its grip some 20,000 years ago. No direct evidence has been
found for this early arrival. The oldest archaeological evidence is
found in Chile's Monte Verde ruins, which contains signs of campfires
and other clues of human occupation from about 14,500 years ago. Debate
continues about what the marks really represent. "I've seen them up
close and personal, and I don't think they are footprints," says Paul
Renne, a geochronologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Renne is keen for the team to find further evidence of human occupation
that might shore up its claim. Bruce Latimer, a human anatomist at the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio who helped identify some
3.5-million-year-old Laetoli footprints in Tanzania, agrees that caution
is necessary. He says that human prints are usually so distinctive they
are hard to miss. "I have not seen them. But if you have to equivocate,
it is probably not human." The team plans to excavate the site in the
Valsequillo Lake basin early next year, in an attempt to uncover other
footprints or signs of human life. Late last month, the British Natural
Environment Research Council gave the Gonzalez team a US $370,000 grant
to continue their work.







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