File: <White Sands Footprints.htm>

ICE AGE HUMAN FOOTPRINTS

AT WHITE SANDS NATIONAL PARK

At White Sands New Mexico there are many fossilized ancient footprints scattered across Lake Otero. During the ice age over 10,000 years before the 21st

Century, large Lake Otero occurred within the Tularosa basin. The climate was more humid, and vegetation was abundant, with grasslands resembling the Midwestern prairies of the Midwest rather than New Mexico’s deserts. Large animals of the ice age were abundant as well as their predators, such as the dire wolf and American Lion. The footprints made by the animals remained fossilized to the present day long after they became extinct. Vegetarian animals such as Columbian mammoths, ground sloths and camels were sustained on the grasses and trees in the Tularosa Basin.

Research has now shown that humans also have been living in The Tularosa Basin of North America for at least 23,000 years as human footprints were found within different layers of sediment below the surface of the ancient lake area. Above and below these footprints were ancient seeds of the grass Ruppia cirrhosa) which were analyzed using radiocarbon dating. Dates were calibrated to 21,130 and 22,860 years before the present.

. References: copy following and paste in browser: https://www.nps.gov/whsa