According to new analysis, the footprints which might be believed to be proof of ice age people in North America want extra correct relationship.
A brand new research calls into query the age of the preserved human footprints present in New Mexico’s Lake Otero Basin, which have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the arrival of people in North America if precisely dated.
An historic lakebed in New Mexico accommodates well-preserved footprints from varied animals that lived there hundreds of years in the past, together with big sloths and mammoths, in addition to people. Previously, analysis revealed in September 2021 steered that these human footprints supplied “definitive evidence” of human occupation of North America over the last ice age, relationship again to between 23 and 21 thousand years in the past. However, a brand new research has solid doubt on this declare.
A gaggle of scientists has just lately revealed a research within the journal Quaternary Research cautioning that the relationship proof for historic human footprints present in a lakebed in New Mexico just isn’t robust sufficient to help claims that will considerably alter our understanding of when and the way people first arrived in North America. The researchers used the identical relationship strategies and supplies because the earlier research, however their findings recommend that the footprints could have been left hundreds of years later than initially thought.
“I read the original Science article on the human footprints at White Sands and was initially struck not only by how tremendous the footprints were on their own, but how important accurate dating would be,” says Charles Oviatt, emeritus professor of geology at Kansas State University and one of many new research’s authors. “I saw potential problems with the scientific tests of the dates reported in the Science paper.”
“It really does throw a lot of what we think we know into question,” says David Rhode, Ph.D., a paleoecologist at DRI and co-author of the brand new research. “That’s why it’s important to really nail down this age, and why we’re suggesting that we need better evidence.”
Archaeologists and historians use plenty of strategies to find out the timing of historic occasions. Based on these strategies, scientists are inclined to agree that the earliest recognized dates of humanity’s colonization of North America lie between 14 and 16 thousand years in the past, after the final ice age. If the unique claims are right, present chronological fashions in fields as diverse as paleogenetics and regional geochronology would have to be reevaluated.
“23 to 21 thousand years ago is in a timeframe where you need to really pay attention to how people got into North America,” says Rhode. “At that time, there was a huge, mile-high mountain range of ice covering Canada to the north, and the pathway down the Pacific Coast wasn’t very accommodating either – so it may have been that people had to come here much earlier than that.”
By learning historic DNA from human fossils and using rates of genetic change (a sort of molecular clock using DNA), paleogeneticists surmise that the American Southwest was first occupied no earlier than 20 thousand years ago. If the footprints are older, it throws into question the use and integrity of these genetic models. It’s possible that the ages from one study at a single site in a New Mexico lake basin are valid, and that age estimates from a variety of other fields are invalid, the authors write, but more robust evidence is needed to confirm the claims.
At the center of the debate are the tiny seeds of an aquatic plant used to age the footprints. The timeframe for the seeds was identified using radiocarbon dating methods, in which researchers examine a type of carbon known as Carbon-14. Carbon-14 originates in the atmosphere and is absorbed by plants through photosynthesis. These carbon isotopes decay at a constant rate over time, and comparing the amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere to the amount present in fossilized plant material allows scientists to determine their approximate age. But the plant species used, Ruppia cirrhosa, grows underwater and therefore obtains much of its carbon for photosynthesis not directly from the atmosphere as terrestrial plants do, but from dissolved carbon atoms in the water.
“While the researchers recognize the problem, they underestimate the basic biology of the plant,” says Rhode. “For the most part, it’s using the carbon it finds in the lake waters. And in most cases, that means it’s taking in carbon from sources other than the contemporary atmosphere – sources which are usually pretty old.”
This method is likely to give radiocarbon-based age estimates of the plant that are much older than the plants themselves. Ancient carbon enters the groundwater of the Lake Otero basin from the eroded bedrock of the Tularosa Valley and the surrounding mountains and occurs in extensive calcium carbonate deposits throughout the basin.
The authors demonstrated this effect by examining Ruppia plant material with a known age from the same region. Botanists collected living Ruppia plants from a nearby spring-fed pond in 1947 and archived them at the University of New Mexico herbarium. Using the same radiocarbon dating method, the plants that were alive in 1947 returned a radiocarbon date suggesting they were about 7400 years old, an offset resulting from the use of ancient groundwater by the plant. The authors note that if the ages of the Ruppia seeds dated from the human footprints were also offset by roughly 7400 years, their real age would be between 15 and 13 thousand years old – a date which aligns with the ages of several other known early North American archaeological sites.
The dating of the footprints can be resolved through other methods, including radiocarbon dating of terrestrial plants (which use atmospheric carbon and not carbon from groundwater) and optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz found in the sediment, the authors write.
“These trackways really are a great resource for understanding the past, there’s no doubt about that,” says Rhode. “I’d love to see them myself. I’m just cautious about the ages that the researchers put to them.”
Reference: “A critical assessment of claims that human footprints in the Lake Otero basin, New Mexico date to the Last Glacial Maximum” by Charles G. Oviatt, David B. Madsen, David Rhode and Loren G. Davis, 2 September 2022, Quaternary Research.
DOI: 10.1017/qua.2022.38
