Ancient Human Footprints Found Near Volcano

[weltweit]

Treasure Trove of Ancient Human Footprints Found Near Volcano

Interesting story, amazing to me that they remain undisturbed for such a time.

 

[editor]

Bit more detail:

The more than 400 footprints cover an area slightly larger than a tennis court, crisscrossing the dark gray mudflat of Engare Sero, on the southern shore of Tanzania’s Lake Natron. No other site in Africa has as many ancient Homo sapiens footprints—making it a treasure trove for scientists trying to tell the story of humankind’s earliest days.

Some of the tracks seem to show people jogging through the muck, keeping upwards of a 12-minute-mile pace. Other prints imply a person with a slightly strange, possibly broken big toe.

Yet more tracks suggest that around a dozen people, mostly women and children, traveled across the mudflat together, striking toward the southwest for parts unknown. The mud tracked it all—including the dirty droplets that fell from their feet with each step.

 

[DotCommunist]

12 minute mile? I can walk one in 15, and they do 12 jogging? Perhaps they were wieghed down with mammoth meat steaks the size of backpacks or something

 

[farmerbarleymow]

12 minute mile? I can walk one in 15, and they do 12 jogging? Perhaps they were wieghed down with mammoth meat steaks the size of backpacks or something

It might be more difficult to run through claggy mud though.

 

[StoneRoad]

Wonderful what can get preserved near to, or by, volcanic eruptions. Mostly, eruptions are destructive, sometimes in extreme ways.

It is possible than the people who left those prints were not only trying to run in claggy mud, it may have been raining - water and ash - and also dark. Not only that, they may have been carrying whatever possessions that they had been able to grab before legging it, and may have been doing so for some time and distance.

 

[weltweit]

I still don't understand how the footprints survived.
Surely rain wind and whatnot would have eroded them.

 

[mauvais]

Where were you when there was only one set of footprints in the sand, Lord?

'It was then that I was playing with my volcano'

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I still don't understand how the footprints survived.
Surely rain wind and whatnot would have eroded them.

If the prints are quickly buried under new layers of sediment, ash, whatever, then they stand a fairly good chance of preservation. If the overall conditions are favourable.

Although these are pretty young at up to 20kya, they've been preserved through the following sequence of events - prints left in claggy mud; ash/mudslide from volcano buries them; further deposits add more layers, compressing and hardening the print layer, etc.

There are lots of trace fossils about. I'm not sure if these have actually fossilised or partly mineralised - but a dry environment is usually excellent at preservation.