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5000 year old footprints found on Formby beach [ UK ]
Champion Newspapers ^ | Thursday, December 9, 2010 | David Raven

Posted on 12/10/2010 9:35:34 PM PST by SunkenCiv

Archaeologists today dubbed the discovery 'sensational', claiming it is one of the most significant historic footprint finds the country has seen... Mysterious footprints have been found in the area since the 1950s but the latest finds also shows that deer, six foot cattle and birds from the Bronze Age once roamed the area...

The first person to take an active role in studying the footprints was ex-Harrington Road resident Gordon Roberts back in 1989. Now 81-years-old, the former head of languages at Formby High, devised his own system of monitoring and tracking the prints by location... He said: "Formby prides itself on being a Viking village but from that aspect there are no visible remains. But of course that was only 1,000 years ago, some of the footprints recently found are over 6,000 years old and allow us to paint a truer picture of the past of Sefton's coast. They have found footprints from aurochs, a breed of cattle which is now extinct, but they would have been very ferocious and fearsome animals standing at six feet tall."

Andrew Brockbank, countryside manager for the National Trust, explained..: "Throughout different periods of history there were animals in Formby coming down to the water's edge and as the coastline was building, their footprints became locked in the sediments. But now the coastline is receding it is beginning to uncover some of the sediments and now you can clearly see some really amazing footprints."

(Excerpt) Read more at champnews.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: anthtropolgy; archeology; godsgravesglyphs
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To: ApplegateRanch

Ick. :’)


21 posted on 12/11/2010 6:08:50 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: ApplegateRanch

In “American Pie II” there was a nice aerial shot of Grand Haven, but the giant rocks in the background of the house where the boys were painting look were left coast. :’)


22 posted on 12/11/2010 6:14:53 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: ApplegateRanch

Probably we’re missing the obvious, that the footprints are of some critter like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.


23 posted on 12/11/2010 6:29:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Michigan (Yoopers) beaches we've walked on vacations had pieces of coal and interesting gnarly driftwood washed up on them.

The Pacific beaches were either coarse, sharp sand or pebbly; had sand dollars, lots of shells, and mucho agate, many of the mossy variety...and also black sands placer deposits that could be panned by an optimistic teenager.

The Southern beaches around Pass Christian were pretty, but they were the ‘icky’ ones: JUST SAND; almost nothing else. Miles and miles of broad expanses of icky, yucky, hot, prickly sand to get in your shoes and swimsuit.

The Carolina beaches also had lots of sand, but a completely different texture to it that wasn't unpleasant; and were littered with shells, “beach glass”, and interesting rocks.

24 posted on 12/11/2010 7:32:27 PM PST by ApplegateRanch (Made in America, by proud American citizens, in 1946.)
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To: Inyo-Mono; bgill

Local, free newspapers don’t always express themselves accurately! Equally, what they report is not necessarily ‘news’! The ‘Formby Footprints’ have been the subject of on-going, detailed research for more than twenty years! However, perhaps I may answer some of the comments raised.....
Between about seven and five thousand years ago there was a barrier-island protected, muddy, intertidal lagoon at what is now Formby Point, Northwest England. Over a period of some two thousand years favourable weather conditions occasionally allowed the tracks left by animals, birds and Mesolithic-Neolithic human hunter-gatherers to be baked hard into these tidal mud strata. During the Bronze Age, however, there was a westerly progradation of the coastline, and for at least three and a half thousand years these laminated silts and their imprints are known to have been have been sealed in and covered by land. But now, rising sea levels are eroding Formby Point and uncovering the palaeo-landscape and the ancient Holocene sediments. However, these silt exposures and their contents are ephemeral; the very sea and tidal forces that uncover them bring about their inevitable destruction.
The ‘six-foot cattle’ mentioned by the reporter refers to the tracks of the aurochs, a large and ferocious species of wild cattle which was hunted to extinction in Britain by the end of the Bronze Age, some three thousand years ago.
Ikhnos


25 posted on 12/13/2010 10:52:47 AM PST by Ikhnos
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To: Ikhnos

Thank you for your informative answer!


26 posted on 12/13/2010 1:56:35 PM PST by Inyo-Mono (Had God not driven man from the Garden of Eden the Sierra Club surely would have.)
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