The story of the longest fossilized journey
A prehistoric woman walked as fast as she could, carrying a child, in a bold straight line across muddy ground. A few hours later, she returned the same way, alone. This is the mysterious tale told by the longest track of fossil footprints in the world, which stretches over 1.5 kilometres in the dried-up lake bed of White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The path also shows marks from a giant ground sloth, which reared up when startled by the humans, and a mammoth that crossed the trail. We have no way of knowing the full story behind the remarkable journey, write geographer Matthew Bennett and palaeontologist Sally Reynolds, who analysed the footprints. But the image will resonate with anyone who’s made a hurried journey with a child in their arms.
The Conversation | 4 min readReference: Quaternary Science Reviews paper
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