Posted on 09/05/2025 9:45:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
* Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show human traffic on the cusp of a subsequent ice age.
* Like carbon dating, scientists use isotopes and context clues to calculate the approximate age of fossils.
* These human prints were surrounded by animals but not hunted animals, indicating humans were just thirsty.
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A uniquely preserved prehistoric mudhole could hold the oldest-ever human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula, scientists say. The seven footprints, found amidst a clutter of hundreds of prehistoric animal prints, are estimated to be 115,000 years old.
Many fossil and artifact windfalls have come from situations like this special lakebed in northern Saudi Arabia. Archaeologists uncovered the site, deep in the Nefud Desert at a location nicknamed “the trace” in Arabic, in 2017, after time and weather wiped the overlying sediment away. It’s easy to imagine that a muddy lakebed was a high-traffic area in the Arabian Peninsula over 100,000 years ago.
When populations move on, these prints are left behind until they’re covered over. In the far, far older Burgess Shale event, some of the oldest organisms ever found were preserved intact because they likely fell into a mudslide and were killed instantly. An entire armored nodosaur was found in unprecedentedly good shape because it was encased in mud and in the cold of the ocean floor. If there were a finder’s fee for incredible archaeology, a lot of it would be paid to mud.
In their paper, the scientists actually examine why that ancient mud was so special at all:
“An experimental study of modern human footprints in mud flats found that fine details were lost within 2 days and prints were rendered unrecognizable within four, and similar observations have been made for other non-hominin mammal tracks.”
That means their special, tiny batch of preserved footprints were made in unique conditions that also form a kind of “fingerprint” for pinning them all to the same timeframe. From there, scientists started to look at who made the footprints. Homo sapiens weren’t the only upright humanoid primate in the game, but the evidence, the scientists say, suggests we were the ones traipsing through the drying lakebed:
“Seven hominin footprints were confidently identified, and given the fossil and archeological evidence for the spread of H. sapiens into the Levant and Arabia during [the era 130,000 to 80,000 years ago] and absence of Homo neanderthalensis from the Levant at that time, we argue that H. sapiens was responsible for the tracks at Alathar. In addition, the size of the Alathar footprints is more consistent with those of early H. sapiens than H. neanderthalensis.”
The lake that forms Alathar today was likely part of a prehistoric highway that drew all the large animals in the area, forming a corridor dotted by freshwater rest areas that living things could travel on as they migrated with the weather or the changing climate. In this case, scientists found very little of the other factors that accompany prehistoric human travel, like knife or tool marks on animal bones indicating hunting.
“The lack of archaeological evidence suggests that the Alathar lake was only briefly visited by people,” the scientists conclude. “These findings indicate that transient lakeshore use by humans during a dry period of the last interglacial was likely primarily tied to the need for potable water.”
These Homo sapiens could be the last ones on their way through a temperate place as an impending ice age descends. That would also explain why their tracks weren’t tracked over by another group, at least not before an entire fresh layer of sediment accumulated.
PinGGG!...................
I would love to have my own Wayback Machine.
I’d wear that thing out.
“Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story”
Popular Mechanics has lost its way.
they were Palestinian feet...
Nothing earth-shaking or groundbreaking, but still interesting.
Fascinating.
There is a lot of if there. Fingerprint, calculate, clues, approximate. I haven’t read far enough to see the word “estimate” but I know it’s in there. Probably probably is in there too.
Archeologist are going to be amazed in 100,000 years when they discover the Hollywood walk of fame !!!
The story follows a group of scientists, two geologists (Barton and Davis) and a palaeontologist (Fowler), who are excavating dinosaur footprints. They come across two physicists (Barnes and Henderson) who are investigating a strange liquid that exhibits negentropy, which Davis describes as being akin to "Time's Arrow" as "Any clock you care to mention – a pendulum for instance – might just as easily run forward as backward. But entropy is a strictly one-way affair – it's always increasing with the passage of time. Hence the expression, 'Time's Arrow'". This causes the realisation that negentropy could result in a reversal of time.
Fowler is invited to visit Henderson's lab, during which time the two geologists come to believe that the physicist is trying to effectively build a way to view the past firsthand. Henderson confirms their conclusion and asks Fowler to join him during the machine's first test run. The dig continues and the team discovers that the footprints give off the impression that the dinosaur was chasing something. Fowler sets off for the lab via Jeep, shortly after which Davis sees the lab explode and the surrounding area ripple. He returns to alert Barton, who has discovered that the dinosaur tracks are accompanied by Jeep tyre prints, implying that the dinosaur had chased after and subsequently trampled Fowler.
I have to ask, “What kept these footprints, and others just like them in various places, preserved for multiple millennia?”
What place or era has no rain, wind, snow, drifting sands or other animals to obliterate the footprints within a few days or at least weeks?
If you leave footprints along a muddy stream or lake practically anywhere on Earth, they will be gone fairly quickly.
Something happened to stagnate the climate and produce no weather phenomena to do the erasures that would normally occur.
Frozen in time and space....................
“...when they discover the Hollywood walk of fame”
Or Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
115,000 years ago is not long in evolutionary terms. Our ancestors have been trying to get out of Africa for a long time. I have the impression that Homo Erectus was the first hominid subspecies to successfully make it, and presumably there were many small groups that attempted it. Most probably didn’t make it, or didn’t survive long in a new environment. (”Hello, winter. What’s this? Whaddya mean there’s no low-hanging fruit for the next eight or nine months and all the migratory animals are gone?”)
We know that as recently as 5-7,000 years ago, the Sahara, the Levant and the Arabian peninsula were wetter than they are today. 115,000 years ago? Probably. Cycles do tend to come and go.
There is a footprint of a dinosaur overlaying a human footprint. Because it’s such a pain in the butt to post pictures on here, I’m not going to bother.
BRAVE AI:
Dinosaur and Human Footprints
A fossilized footprint of a dinosaur overlapping a human footprint, known as the Alvis Delk footprint, is claimed to be evidence of coexistence between humans and dinosaurs. This fossil, discovered in July 2000 near Glen Rose, Texas, in Cretaceous limestone, features an eleven-inch human footprint intruded by a dinosaur track, specifically attributed to Acrocanthosaurus.
The Creation Evidence Museum, which possesses the fossil, asserts that CT scans performed on the rock confirmed the authenticity of both prints, showing compression and distribution features consistent with natural formation and ruling out carving or alteration.
The museum and its supporters, including figures like Carl Baugh, argue that such a find would challenge conventional geological and biological timelines, potentially supporting creationist and catastrophist views.
However, the scientific community largely disputes the interpretation of the footprint as human. Critics, including paleontologist Glen Kuban, argue that the “human” footprint lacks key anatomical features of a human foot, such as a distinct arch and proper toe arrangement, and instead resembles a dinosaur track made by a bipedal dinosaur walking in a plantigrade manner, where the entire sole of the foot is pressed into the sediment.
The elongated shape and lack of clear toe impressions are consistent with known dinosaur tracks, particularly those of theropods, which can create impressions that superficially resemble human footprints under certain conditions.
Furthermore, the context of the fossil’s discovery is questionable; the rock was not found in situ on a track bed but on a loose slab, and the provenance details are insufficient to verify its origin.
Some researchers have noted that the “human” track may have been altered, with toes added after the fact, and that the overall pattern aligns more with natural geological processes like erosion or the formation of elongated dinosaur tracks.
The scientific consensus is that the footprint is not a genuine human track but a misinterpretation of a dinosaur footprint formed under specific sedimentary conditions.
Humans didn’t evolve toes until they invented table legs upon which to stub them.
Preservation is obviously rare, otherwise we’d all be able to retrace our steps back to our first one.
It varies. Crack a book.
“ they were Palestinian feet...”
Lol…don’t give them any ideas.
Just wait until they claim a six year old was stomped to death by a Jewish Mastodon.
No surprise; modern humans were present 300,000 years ago, according to mitochondrial DNA, and in the fossil record to 200,000 years ago.
I’ve seen the movie “Caveman”. I assure you, man coexisted with dinosaurs.
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