Two tracks of ancient human footprints engraved on a Moroccan beach form one of the largest and best-preserved tracks in the world
According to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers discovered the footprints near the northern tip of North Africa in 2022 while examining boulders on a nearby beach.
“Between tides and tides, I told my team that we should go north to explore another beach,” study lead author Mouncef Sedrati, associate professor of coastal dynamics and geomorphology at the University of Southern Brittany, told Live Science ( France). . «We were surprised to find the first footprint. “At first we weren’t convinced it was a footprint, but then we found more of the track.”
Analysis of the site, the only one of its kind in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean, revealed two tracks containing a total of 85 human footprints that had been carved into the beach by a group of at least five early modern people.
The team used optically stimulated luminescence dating, a technique that determines when specific minerals in or near an artifact were last exposed to heat or sunlight. Based on the age of the fine quartz grains that make up most of the sand on the gently sloping beach, the researchers determined that about 90,000 years ago, a generational group of Homo sapiens walked the beach and created the paths. According to the study, the event occurred during the Late Pleistocene period, the last ice age that began 150,000 years ago and ended about 11,700 years ago.
Photo credit: M. Sedrati et al
“We took on-site measurements to determine the length and depth of the footprints,” Sedrati explained. “Based on the footprint and the size of the footprints, we were able to determine the approximate ages of the individuals, including children, teenagers and adults.”
According to the study, researchers attribute the excellent preservation of the ancient prints to a number of factors, such as the layout of the beach and the wide range of the tides for “the ultimate preservation of the prints.”
“The extraordinary thing is the location of the beach on a rocky platform covered with clay sediments,” explains Sedrati. “These sediments created good conditions for preserving footprints on the sandbar as the tides quickly buried the beach.” “That’s why the footprints are so well preserved here.”
However, researchers still don’t know what the Ice Age group did on the beach, and future analysis of the site could reveal this information. However, they must act quickly as “the continued collapse of the rocky coastal platform … could lead to its eventual disappearance,” including the footprints preserved on it, the team wrote in the study.
“We hope to learn the entire history of this group of people and what they did there,” Sedrati said.
REFERENCE
A late Pleistocene hominin footprint site on the North African coast of Morocco