oldest human footprints outside Africa found

[DrLeftover]

800,000-year-old human footprints found in Norfolk

7 February 2014

Happisburgh prints, believed to have been left by small group of adults and children, are the oldest discovered outside Africa

The oldest human footprints ever found outside Africa, left in a muddy river estuary 800,000 years ago, have been discovered in Norfolk by scientists from the British Museum and other national museums and universities.

The prints were left by a small group of people heading south across the estuary at Happisburgh, through a landscape where mammoths, hippos and rhinoceros grazed. Scientists believe they were a group of adults and children, including one with a foot size the equivalent of a modern size 8 shoe, suggesting a man about 1.7 metres (5ft 7ins) tall.

The footprints are the first direct evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe, previously revealed only by the stone tools and animal bones they left scattered.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/07/oldest-human-footprints-happisburgh-norfolk

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Awesome. I wonder what those people were like. Lets hop in our time machine and go meet them. Plus leave some Nike shoe prints too just to throw people off.

 

[DrLeftover]

You mean like these?

To the left is the “Meister Print,” found in Utah within a block of shale. It was first publicized in the CRS Quarterly as the footprint containing a trilobite fossil. Bottom left is a fossilized shoe sole found petrified in Triassic rock. This print specimen is so clear that the threads are visible to the naked eye! Also published in this journal is the 1995 study of quasihuman ichnofossils (supposed human tracks) found with tracks of dinosaurs in strata near Tuba City, Arizona. Photomicrographic analysis indicates that the human-like impressions were created by pressure which created relatively smooth surfaces, unlike the rougher surfaces of impressions formed inside concretions and unlike surrounding surfaces. Comparison of the quasihuman ichnofossils with modern tracks in wet mud shows them to be closely comparable, supporting their theory that the fossil imprints were made by human feet.

http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/evidence/paleontological/footprints/



There has been some serious questions about those however.
http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=198

 

[Raven]

HAPPISBURGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My favourite place in Norfolk! Went there for my last beach trip.
Saw this on the news, great find but such a shame that the erosion is so bad there they won't be saved. Will be washed away into the sea before long.