The more than 1.5-kilometer-long trail was made by a young adult carrying a toddler
On a day during the late Ice Age, a young adult or teen carrying a toddler hustled across a muddy flat where mammoths and giant sloths roamed. Now, over 10,000 years later, fossilized footprints reveal that possibly perilous journey.“The length of the trackway is really exceptional and give us a prolonged window into the behavior of the individuals,” says evolutionary biologist Kevin Hatala of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the research. It evokes a personal and intimate connection with our ancestors, as many people today can relate to the feeling of holding a child in their arms, he says.
Scientists stumbled across the find when, in 2018, they spied a continuous stretch of dark spots along what was once the shore of the ancient Lake Otero, now dried up. A little digging revealed fossilized human footprints as well as those from a mammoth and ground sloth.
