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. 2021 Sep 24;373(6562):1528-1531.
doi: 10.1126/science.abg7586. Epub 2021 Sep 23.

Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum

Matthew R Bennett  1 , David Bustos  2 , Jeffrey S Pigati  3 , Kathleen B Springer  3 , Thomas M Urban  4 , Vance T Holliday  5   6 , Sally C Reynolds  1 , Marcin Budka  1 , Jeffrey S Honke  3 , Adam M Hudson  3 , Brendan Fenerty  6 , Clare Connelly  2 , Patrick J Martinez  2 , Vincent L Santucci  7 , Daniel Odess  8
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Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum

Matthew R Bennett et al. Science. .

Abstract

Archaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Here, we present evidence from excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States), where multiple in situ human footprints are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers that yield calibrated radiocarbon ages between ~23 and 21 thousand years ago. These findings confirm the presence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, adding evidence to the antiquity of human colonization of the Americas and providing a temporal range extension for the coexistence of early inhabitants and Pleistocene megafauna.

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