The White Sands footprints
Human tracks beside a vanished New Mexico lake are 23,000 years old, and the date has now been confirmed twice.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 1 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Footprints preserved in lake margin sediments at White Sands were dated in 2021 to between about 23,000 and 21,000 years ago using seeds in the layers — thousands of years before the Americas were thought to be occupied, and before the ice sheets closed the interior route. The seeds' reliability was disputed, so independent dating using pollen and quartz grains was carried out and published in 2023 and 2025, both returning the same age. Reconciling this with the genetic evidence remains an open problem.