{"id":8795,"date":"2022-12-13T09:22:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T15:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=8795"},"modified":"2022-12-13T09:22:46","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T15:22:46","slug":"uwm-alum-helps-uncover-oldest-ever-human-footprints-discovered-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uwm-alum-helps-uncover-oldest-ever-human-footprints-discovered-in-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"UWM alum helps uncover oldest-ever human footprints discovered in North America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Soil rich with gypsum helped preserve human footprints from some 23,000 years ago at what is now White Sands National Park. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Millennia ago, before the pyramids were built, before the development of pottery, before mammoths and mastodons went extinct, children were splashing in puddles on the shores of paleo-lake Otero in the Tularosa Basin.<\/p>\n

Nearby, a mother walked along the shore, holding a baby on one hip. A hunter stalked his prey. Behind them, they left tracks in the mud, which was rich with gypsum \u2013 a mineral that today is used in plaster casts. The gypsiferous soil, combined with the right level of water and clay, ensured those footprints remained pressed into the ground.<\/p>\n

Over thousands of years, gypsum from the nearby San Andreas Mountains washed into the basin and crystallized as Lake Otero slowly dried up. The crystals eroded into fine grains of white sand, covering the tracks completely.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Clare Connelly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then, 23,000 years later, the footprints were uncovered once more, thanks to erosion. These now-fossilized tracks are the oldest-ever human footprints discovered in North America. A team of archaeologists at\u00a0White Sands National Park<\/a>\u00a0in New Mexico began excavation on the site in 2020 and\u00a0publicized their findings<\/a>\u00a0in late 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt completely changes our perception of the peopling of the area,\u201d said Clare Connelly, a UWM alumna and one of the archaeologists on the excavation team. \u201cBefore our (discovery) came out, it was believed that people weren\u2019t in that area until 16,000 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

But more than that, seeing the footprints has driven home that\u00a0people\u00a0<\/em>once lived here.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look at an artifact and you can guess what it was like to make that artifact,\u201d Connelly said. \u201cBut you look at these footprints, and you can see kids splashing in puddles. You can see the way an individual\u2019s hip is turned because they\u2019re carrying a child. With the way that their foot is pressed, you can see someone hunting. You don\u2019t have to guess. And that\u2019s just so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

A journey to White Sands<\/h3>\n

Connelly has long been interested in archaeology and history. After earning a bachelor\u2019s degree anthropology at the University of Ohio, Connelly came to UW-Milwaukee for graduate school, eager to study under distinguished professor of anthropology Bettina Arnold.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Researchers dug trenches while excavating the footprints. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While at UWM, Connelly got an internship with Death Valley National Park and fell in love with the U.S. National Park Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom then on, I decided I was going to be a jack-of-all-trades archaeologist and learn whatever tools I needed to be able to work for the Park Service,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her first job was with the Midwest Archaeological Center, a division of the National Parks which contracts to help federal agencies with their land and cultural resource management. From there, she held museum positions in North Dakota and Texas before she was hired at White Sands National Park in 2020.<\/p>\n

The job was everything Connelly could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first day (I) was hunting mammoth tracks,\u201d she said, laughing. (She and the intern leading the hunt did end up finding them \u2013 they look like huge circles, Connelly said.)<\/p>\n

White Sands is full of fossilized tracks that are all thousands of years old: mammoths and mastodons, canines and felines, human, camel and even giant sloth. Connelly was hired in part to help excavate the human footprints. As part of her job, she\u2019s working with the descendants of the people who made those early tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work with dozens of tribes and pueblos who are connected to this land. They have a lot of history here,\u201d Connelly said. \u201cThey\u2019re literally walking in their ancestors\u2019 footprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to excavating fossils and liaising with the Indigenous community, Connelly is responsible for all of the archaeological work in White Sands National Park. That means she\u2019s in charge of the site\u2019s museum program, its compliance with federal guidelines, the park\u2019s geographic information systems program, and \u201ceverything that is in any way connected to cultural resources,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s very common in the Park Service to wear a lot of hats.\u201d<\/p>\n

She and the footprint excavation team are also waiting on some new dating information to find out more about those 23,000-year-old fossilized tracks.<\/p>\n

A significant discovery<\/h3>\n

The footprints were discovered by accident in 2009. A young boy had gotten lost in the park. As he was helping look for the missing child, David Bustos, the resource program manager at White Sands National Park and now Connelly\u2019s boss, stumbled across some fossilized footprints that looked to be human. After the boy was found safe, Bustos called in experts from around the globe to help him excavate what would turn about to be the oldest-known fossilized human footprints in North America.<\/p>\n

Connelly was hired after the discovery, but she has helped excavate the site and studied the surrounding areas to understand what the environment might have been like when the footprints were made. While the oldest do date back 23,000 years, some tracks are as \u201cyoung\u201d as 10,000 years old. Using carbon dating, the other researchers can estimate the age of the footprints based on the age of the surrounding organic material, like seeds and soil.<\/p>\n

And who knows, Connelly added \u2013 it could be that there are even older footprints in the area that just haven\u2019t been uncovered yet. The researchers are still digging in hopes of learning more about how the American southwest came to be populated.<\/p>\n

But one thing is certain: No matter when they lived, some things about humanity are universal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll look at these footprints, and you can see kids splashing in puddles. And that\u2019s just so cool,\u201d Connelly said. \u201cIt\u2019s just so human. Children are always going to jump in puddles when they see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Written by Sarah Vickery<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/alum-helps-uncover-oldest-ever-human-footprints-discovered-in-north-america\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millennia ago, before the pyramids were built, before the development of pottery, before mammoths and mastodons went extinct, children were splashing in puddles on the shores of paleo-lake Otero in the Tularosa Basin. Nearby, a mother walked along the shore, holding a baby on one hip. A hunter stalked his prey. Behind them, they left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[107],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-8795","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-milwaukee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/8795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=8795"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=8795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}