[Aqualist] Australian Quaternary in the news

[Tim Barrows]

"Ice Age footprints tracked in NSW national park"

By Anna Salleh from ABC Science Online

The shifting sands of time have revealed Australia's earliest human 
footprints, giving a glimpse of life at the height of the last ice age.

At tens of thousands of years old, the find is the largest group of 
human footprints from the Pleistocene era ever found.

Archaeologist Dr Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne and 
colleagues report their findings from the New South Wales Willandra 
Lakes World Heritage Area online ahead of print publication in the 
Journal of Human Evolution.

"It's a little snapshot in time," Dr Cupper said.

"The possibilities are endless in terms of getting a window into past 
Aboriginal society."

Dr Cupper says a young woman by the name of Mary Pappin Jnr of the 
Mutthi Mutthi people found the footprints in August 2003 while 
exploring the area with team member Professor Steve Webb of Bond 
University on Queensland's Gold Coast, as part of a project to 
educate young Aboriginal people in archaeology.

"They found a clay pan area up in the dunes near one of the lakes and 
found the first of what's turned out to be about 450 footprints over 
700 square metres or so."

He says the team has found 22 track ways, some up to 20 metres long, 
from where single people had walked in a line.

The prints are between 19,000 and 23,000-years-old, dating from the 
height of the last glacial period.

"It's quite remarkable," Dr Cupper said. "We haven't found any 
footprints from the Pleistocene in Australia before."

He says the prints are also the largest group of Pleistocene human 
footprints in the world.
A unique environment

The prints were preserved for so many thousands of years because of a 
specific combination of land features.

"It's quite a unique little environment," Dr Cupper said.

He says the footprints, some up to 15 millimetres deep, were laid 
down in silty clay containing calcium carbonate that hardened like 
concrete as it dried out.

The dried prints were then covered by a further crust of clay and 
finally by metres of sand from shifting dunes.

The sand has since blown away revealing the prints, Dr Cupper says.

"Fortunately the thin layer of calcareous clay that initially covered 
them has largely been retained in tact," he said.

For the prints to have formed it is likely that the clay had been 
softened by rain beforehand.

"They're possibly a little band of people moving around the site and 
they may have only walked across it once or twice before the area was 
covered and preserved."
Footprint tales

The researchers say the footprints provide an insight into the 
anatomy and behaviour of the people who left them.

"Very basically we can get a little glimpse of what this group of 
people were made of," Dr Cupper said.

"We are able to estimate people's height by the length of their footprints."

He says the team could also infer the sex and the age of the people 
who left the footprints, and use the distance between paces to tell 
how fast they were moving.

He says the group likely included men up to 1.8 metres tall, running 
as fast as 20 kilometres an hour, as well as young children, ambling 
along at three or five kilometres an hour.

In some cases these tracks cross each other, but Dr Cupper says it's 
not possible to tell if they crossed at the same time or not.

The researchers also found holes, possibly made by a stick and linear 
lines that could be from sticks or spears being dragged along.

They also found emu and kangaroo footprints in the area.

"It's quite an element of excitement with the local Aboriginal 
community. It is a really strong emotive link with some of their past 
ancestors," he said.

Executive officer of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, Michael 
Westaway, told the ABC that the original discoverer of the footprints 
Mary Pappin Jnr was unavailable for comment.

For more information visit ABC Science Online.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1536162.htm