Matthew R. Bennett

• Bournemouth University

Human footprints at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA, reportedly date to between ~23,000 and 21,000 years ago according to radiocarbon dating of seeds from the aquatic plant Ruppia cirrhosa . These ages remain controversial because of potential old carbon reservoir effects that could compromise their accuracy. We present new calibrated ¹⁴...

Madsen et al . question the reliability of calibrated radiocarbon ages associated with human footprints discovered recently in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA. On the basis of the geologic, hydrologic, stratigraphic, and chronologic evidence, we maintain that the ages are robust and conclude that the footprints date to between ~23,000 an...

We present an updated time frame for the 30 m thick late Miocene sedimentary Trachilos section from the island of Crete that contains the potentially oldest hominin footprints. The section is characterized by normal magnetic polarity. New and published foraminifera biostratigraphy results suggest an age of the section within the Mediterranean biozo...

Augmented reality (AR) has huge potential as a science outreach tool, especially around palaeontology where it is possible to bring extinct animals to life. This paper shares our experiences as academic geoscientists in developing a series of AR applications during a three-year period. We do not focus on the technical issues of app design and codin...

Early footsteps in the Americas Despite a plethora of archaeological research over the past century, the timing of human migration into the Americas is still far from resolved. In a study of exposed outcrops of Lake Otero in White Sands National Park in New Mexico, Bennett et al . reveal numerous human footprints dating to about 23,000 to 21,000 ye...

At Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau we report a series of hand and foot impressions that appear to have been intentionally placed on the surface of a unit of soft travertine. The travertine was deposited by water from a hot spring which is now inactive and as the travertine lithified it preserved the traces. On the basis of the sizes of the hand and...

Footprints are left, or obtained, in a variety of scenarios from crime scenes to anthropological investigations. Determining the sex of a footprint can be useful in screening such impressions and attempts have been made to do so using single or multi landmark distances, shape analyses and via the density of friction ridges. Here we explore the rela...

Sample size is a challenge for most field scientists determined not by the statistically ideal, but by the available. In vertebrate ichnology, track length is an important variable correlating well with the track‐maker’s biology. It is also key to estimating the minimum number of individuals (MNI) present on a trampled horizon. Broad assumptions on...

In recent years deep neural networks have become the workhorse of computer vision. In this paper, we employ a deep learning approach to classify footwear impression’s features known as descriptors for forensic use cases. Within this process, we develop and evaluate an effective technique for feeding downsampled greyscale impressions to a neural net...

Impression evidence retained in carpet is usually recovered, if at all, in two dimensions via a vertical photograph. Here, we show that recovery is also possible via SfM photogrammetry and this gives good quality results that allow digital measurements both in the x‐y plane and by depth (z‐axis). This study focuses on recovery from polypropylene ca...

The recovery of three-dimensional footwear impressions at crime scenes can be a challenge but can also yield important investigative data. Traditional methods involve casting 3D impressions but these methods have limitations: the trace is usually destroyed during capture; the process can be time consuming, with a risk of failure; and the resultant...

In recent years deep neural networks have become the workhorse of computer vision. In this paper, we employ a deep learning approach to classify footwear impression's features known as \emph{descriptors} for forensic use cases. Within this process, we develop and evaluate an effective technique for feeding downsampled greyscale impressions to a neu...

Animal footprints are preserved in the archaeological record with greater frequency than perhaps previously assumed. This assertion is supported by a rapid increase in the number of discoveries in recent years. The analysis of such trace fossils is now being undertaken with an increasing sophistication, and a methodological revolution is afoot link...

Human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than one and a half kilometres of an out- and-return journey and form the longest Late Pleistocene-age double human trackway in the world. An adolescent or small adult female made two trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a young child in at least one direction. Despite giant groun...

Understanding the route(s) and timing of human colonisation of the Americas has become something of a scientific obsession; the last chapter in the ‘Out of Africa’ story. It is a story linked with the end-Pleistocene extinction of megafauna and therefore potentially the start of the Anthropocene. The role of Paleoindian foragers in the extinction o...

New ichnological data are available at the prehistoric site of Melka Kunture, Upper Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Excavation of new test pits enabled us to explore the volcanic and fluvio-lacustrine sequence at the Gombore II Open Air Museum archaeological site (ca. 0.85 Ma). This has allowed a detailed reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment and of th...

Fossil hominin footprints provide a direct source of evidence of locomotor behaviour and allow inference of other biological data such as anthropometrics. Many recent comparative analyses of hominin footprints have employed 3D analytical methods to assess their morphological affinities, comparing tracks from different locations and/or time periods....

Footprint evidence of human-megafauna interactions remains extremely rare in the archaeological and palaeontological records. Recent work suggests ancient playa environments may hold such evidence, though the prints may not be visible. These so-called “ghost tracks” comprise a rich archive of biomechanical and behavioral data that remains mostly un...

This chapter provides a broad overview of tracks and trackways relevant to both vertebrate and forensic footprints and footwear, along with a review of the rationale and contents of this book. Key definitions are introduced and explained and some principles of scientific method are also explored which are important to questions of data interpretati...

Vertebrate ichnology is being revolutionised by the ease with which 3D data can be acquired and there is an increased focus on developing analytical tools and approaches that allow hypothesis driven testing. This revolution is not without its detractors, but is perhaps more advance than the use of 3D data in forensic science. In this chapter we fir...

Before one can study a set of tracks whether they are fossil remains from the past or were imprinted by a serial killer just yesterday one first has to find them and then record or document them to enable description and analysis. This chapter focuses on prospection and the recording of tracks and again shows the benefits that can be achieved by th...

In the previous chapter we saw how one can create and visualise a 3D model using DigTrace or similar proprietary software. Here we focus on the analytical techniques and tools that can be applied to such models to aid measurement, comparison and analysis. We start with a discussion of accuracy and precision before looking at basic measurement techn...

This chapter introduces the freeware DigTrace which was developed by the authors for both use in vertebrate ichnology and for application to forensic practice. There are other software solutions which do some of these functions and these are briefly discussed. This chapter forms an extended manual to the software and the reader is encouraged to dow...

Within this chapter we focus on forensic applications for 3D files and more generally on forensic practice where trace footwear is involved. We discuss the challenges of individualisation based on recovered footwear traces and explore the associated issues of probability. We finish with a series of fictitious cases which we hope illustrates the pot...

This chapter provides practical solutions and ‘hacks’ that enable the user to perform a range of useful functions when dealing with tracks whether 2D or 3D. There are tips on using specific pieces of software and original computer code to help with specific tasks. It is not a definitive list but we aim to produce a body of information that the user...

Implicit in any biomechanical analysis of tracks (footprints), whatever the animal, is the assumption that depth distribution within the track reflects the applied plantar pressure in some way. Here we describe sub-track deformation structures produced by Proboscidea (probably Mammuthus columbi) at White Sands National Monument (WHSA) in New Mexico...

“There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me.” Sherlock Holmes, Study of Scarlet. Despite the fictional nature of Sherlock Holmes this statement rings true today. The study of f...

This is a report on the rich ichnological record of Gombore gully (Melka Kunture, Ethiopia).

Tracks and trackways of a range of Pleistocene megafauna can be found in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, U.S.A. These tracks occur is several forms, not all of which are visible and some of which are only intermittently visible depending on lighting and moisture conditions. Here we present the result of a successful test of cesium vapor...

Predator-prey interactions revealed by vertebrate trace fossils are extremely rare. We present footprint evidence from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico for the association of sloth and human trackways. Geologically, the sloth and human trackways were made contemporaneously, and the sloth trackways show evidence of evasion and defensive b...

Predator-prey interactions revealed by vertebrate trace fossils are extremely rare. We present footprint evidence from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico for the association of sloth and human trackways. Geologically, the sloth and human trackways were made contemporaneously, and the sloth trackways show evidence of evasion and defensive b...

Predator-prey interactions revealed by vertebrate trace fossils are extremely rare. We present footprint evidence from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico for the association of sloth and human trackways. Geologically, the sloth and human trackways were made contemporaneously, and the sloth trackways show evidence of evasion and defensive b...

Supplementary Information related to the paper: Archaeology and ichnology at Gombore II-2, Melka Kunture, Ethiopia: everyday life of a mixed-age hominin group 700,000 years ago.

We report the occurrence at 0.7 million years (Ma) of an ichnological assemblage at Gombore II-2, which is one of several archaeological sites at Melka Kunture in the upper Awash Valley of Ethiopia, 2000 m asl. Adults and children potentially as young as 12 months old left tracks in a silty substrate on the shore of a body of water where ungulates,...

Vertebrate tracks are subject to a wide distribution of morphological types. A single trackmaker may be associated with a range of tracks reflecting individual pedal anatomy and behavioural kinematics mediated through substrate properties which may vary both in space and time. Accordingly, the same trackmaker can leave substantially different morph...

Supplemental Information on methods and geological settings The supplemental file includes information about the methodologies used in this paper to collect and analyse three-dimensional data and more information on the geological context of the studied areas, i.e., the Laetoli tracksite (Tanzania) and the Ajoie ichnocoenosis (Switzerland).

Raw data repositories The document includes the link to all the repositories where the raw data used in this work are located.

The collection and dissemination of vertebrate ichnological data is struggling to keep up with techniques that are becoming commonplace in the wider palaeontological field. A standard protocol is required to ensure that data is recorded, presented and archived in a manner that will be useful both to contemporary researchers, and to future generatio...

We describe late Miocene tetrapod footprints (tracks) from the Trachilos locality in western Crete (Greece), which show hominin-like characteristics. They occur in an emergent horizon within an otherwise marginal marine succession of Messinian age (latest Miocene), dated to approximately 5.7 Ma (million years), just prior to the Messinian Salinity...

Water is a fundamental resource, yet its spatiotemporal availability in East Africa is poorly understood. This is the area where most hominin first occurrences are located, and consequently the potential role of water in hominin evolution and dispersal remains unresolved. Here, we show that hundreds of springs currently distributed across East Afri...

Supplementary Figures and Supplementary Tables

Here we report the remarkable superposition of a pre-historic trackway (349–350 ± 3 ka) with one used in more recent historical times, potentially forming one of the oldest path or trackways currently known. A Plinian eruption of the Roccamonfina Volcano resulted in a succession of pyroclastic flows. A combination of syn-sedimentary erosion and dep...

Climate shifts at decadal scales can have environmental consequences, and therefore, identifying areas that act as environmental refugia is valuable in understanding future climate variability. Here we illustrate how, given appropriate geohydrology, a rift basin and its catchment can buffer vegetation response to climate signals on decadal time-sca...

Human, and hominin tracks, occur infrequently within the geological record as rare acts of sedimentary preservation.They have the potential, however, to reveal important information about the locomotion of our ancestors, especially when the tracks pertain to different hominin species.The number of known track sites is small and in making inter-spec...

The Laetoli site (Tanzania) contains the oldest known hominin footprints, and their interpretation remains open to debate, despite over 35 years of research. The two hominin trackways present are parallel to one another, one of which is a composite formed by at least two individuals walking in single file. Most researchers have focused on the singl...

Human footprints provide some of the most emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. They provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominin footprints, evidence with respect to the evolution of human gait and foot anatomy. While human footprint sites are rare in the geological record the number of sites around t...

In the previous chapter we have seen how there is a wide diversity of human tracksites each with a different depositional history and mechanism of track preservation. The challenge for the geoarchaeologist is not only to document such sites but also to advise with respect to their long-term conservation. At many human tracksites this is challenging...

Human tracks have now been recorded at a number of sites across the globe. Lockley et al. (Ichnos 15:106–125, 2008) provides a definitive review of many of these sites and our aim here is to focus on a few important examples which are either in the authors’ judgement particularly significant or feature within this book. Sites can be grouped on many...

In this first chapter we provide a broad overview of human trace fossils (ichnology) and outline the contents of and rationale for this book. The potential for human tracks to tell us about how our ancestors may have walked is discussed as is the contribution that human tracks can make in other areas of archaeology and forensic science. Key definit...

Traces left by track-makers whether walking or running in bare feet or encased in foot wear have the potential to help place an individual at a crime scene or to help investigators work out the pattern and sequence of actions that took place. While in Europe few people may move about barefoot, in other parts of the world a significant proportion of...

There is something evocative in a human track and for many a trackway provides an instant connection with the track-maker and their journey, blending past with present. Their preservation is in itself a rare occurrence in the geological record and something of a marvel. They contain information not only about human presence, but about the track-mak...

What can, and perhaps more importantly cannot, be inferred from a series of human tracks? In this chapter we explore this question by first looking at the relationships that exist between various foot dimensions and such things as stature and body mass. We explore the population specific nature of these empirical relationships and demonstrate their...

Before any inferences about a human track-maker can be made from the tracks they leave we first need to understand how substrate properties (consistency) mediate and record the interaction between the foot and the ground. A substrate has a profound influence in a range of different ways: it controls the way in which a track-maker walks; it moderate...

The sophistication and quality of field data obtained from human tracksites has increased dramatically during the last decade from the largely descriptive papers of Holocene tracksites common before the late 1990s to the more sophisticated data-rich papers of recent years. There are exceptions of course to this generalisation largely around the tra...

Fossil evidence for longitudinal arches in the foot is frequently used to constrain the origins of terrestrial bipedality in human ancestors. This approach rests on the prevailing concept that human feet are unique in functioning with a relatively stiff lateral mid-foot, lacking the significant flexion and high plantar pressures present in non-huma...

Footprints are the most direct source of evidence about locomotor biomechanics in extinct vertebrates. One of the principal suppositions underpinning biomechanical inferences is that footprint geometry correlates with dynamic foot pressure, which, in turn, is linked with overall limb motion of the trackmaker. In this study, we perform the first qua...

We report a Holocene human and animal footprint site from the Namib Sand Sea, south of Walvis Bay, Namibia. Using these data, we explore intratrail footprint variability associated with small variations in substrate properties using a "whole foot" analytical technique developed for the studies in human ichnology. We demonstrate high levels of intra...

Human footprints provide some of the most publically emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. To the scientific community they provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominins potential evidence with respect to the evolution of gait. While rare in the geological record the number of footprint sites has incre...

It is commonly held that the major functional features of the human foot (e.g. a functional longitudinal medial arch, lateral to medial force transfer and hallucal (big-toe) push-off) appear only in the last 2 Myr, but functional interpretations of footbones and footprints of early human ancestors (hominins) prior to 2 million years ago (Mya) remai...

2010: Glaciers and Glaciation. Second edition. 802 pp. Hodder Education, London. ISBN 978-0-340-905791. Paperback, Full Colour, £45.00

Holocene footprints have been reported from several locations around the UK coast preserved within inter-tidal sediments. These sediments are normally fine-grained silts, sands and clays. Here we report potential human footprints preserved in the lower of two inter-tidal peat units exposed on the foreshore at Kenfig in South Wales. The lower peat l...

Verification of human footprints within the geological record provides critical evidence of presence as well as information on the biomechanics of the individuals who made those prints. Consequently, the correct identification of human footprints is important, but is something for which critical and objective criteria do not exist. The current pape...

New techniques have allowed scientists examine ancient footprints to understand how their forebears' physiques and lifestyles changed over time. Ancestors' ability to walk efficiently influenced how they foraged and hunted for food, how they gathered raw materials for tools and how they migrated across the globe. Fossil foot bones are rarely found...

Large-scale catastrophic collapse of volcanic edifices is a relatively common phenomenon in the geologic record. However, the processes that occur during debris avalanche emplacement remain poorly understood and must generally be inferred from analysis of avalanche deposits in the field, which are recognized to contain a suite of recurrent features...

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-470-51691-1 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-470-51690-4 The new Second Edition of Glacial Geology provides a modern, comprehensive summary of glacial geology and geomorphology. It is has been thoroughly revised and updated from the original First Edition. This book will appeal to all students interested in the landforms and sediments th...

A large-scale avalanche of Earth material is modeled here as a granular flow using a distinct element numerical model PFC 2D. Such failures occur in a variety of geological settings and are known to occur frequently over geologic time-scales transporting significant volumes of material basinward. Despite this, they remain poorly understood. The mod...

This paper documents the glaciovolcanic landsystem of the Brekknafjöll–Jarlhettur ridge in Central Iceland. Glaciolacustrine diamict is found beneath, and in association with, a complex assemblage of pillow lava, lava breccias and hyaloclastites. Three depositional environments are identified: glaciolacustrine fan, pillow lava dome, and hyaloclasti...

The Newbigging esker system shows an ordered variation in stratigraphy and sedimentology within three morphological and spatially distinct landform assemblages: a single linear ridge, interrupted and terminated by shallow fans along its length; a series of multiple sub-parallel ridges and shallow fans, and a complex multi-ridge structure. The sedim...

Chesil Beach (Dorset) is one of the most famous coastal landforms on the British coast. The gravel beach is over 18 km long and is separated for much of its length from land by a tidal lagoon known as The Fleet. The beach links the Isle of Portland in the east to the mainland in the west. Despite its iconic status there is little available informat...

Hominin footprints offer evidence about gait and foot shape, but their scarcity, combined with an inadequate hominin fossil record, hampers research on the evolution of the human gait. Here, we report hominin footprints in two sedimentary layers dated at 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago (Ma) at Ileret, Kenya, providing the oldest evidence of an essen...

This chapter explores the application of optical laser scanning to the collection, preservation and analysis of footwear evidence in soils using examples from the archaeological record and from a series of experiments. Optical laser scanning provides a direct, non-invasive method of recording footwear evidence with sub-millimetre accuracy. It allow...

Human and animal footprints found in the Valsequillo Basin were formed on the upper bedding planes surfaces of a volcanic ash (Xalnene Ash) deposited by a subaqueous volcano along the shores of a Pleistocene lake. The footprints were made on lake shorelines and the exposed lake floor during low stands associated, either with water displacement duri...

The emplacement processes of large-scale volcanic debris avalanche events remain poorly understood. Much of what we know about this complex process is interpreted from deposits that typically contain a suite of commonly observed characteristics including preservation of original stratigraphy and finer-grained basal (shearing) layers. Interpreting t...

This paper describes the internal architecture of a push moraine formed by a winter-spring surge of Hagafellsjökull-Eystri (Iceland) in 1998/99. The sedimentary architecture of this push moraine consists of a multilayered slab of glaciofluvial sediments with a monoclinal structure that has been displaced laterally by the advancing ice margin. The c...

This pre-print has been accepted by the journal, Boreas [© Taylor and Francis]. The definitive version: Graham et al, 2006. Comment on : "A test of the englacial thrusting hypothesis of 'hummocky' moraine formation", Boreas, 36(1), pp. 103-107, is available at: http://www.journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/openurl.asp?genre=journal&issn=0300-9483.

Although eskers are frequently described glaciofluvial landforms, they are poorly understood. To assist with the interpretation of Pleistocene examples, modern analogue data are required. This paper documents the morphology, sedimentology and formation of a 650 m long esker system in front of the high-arctic glacier Vegbreen in Svalbard. The esker...

The tidewater glacier complex of Kongsvegen/Kronebreen, at the head of Kongsfjorden in north-west Spitsbergen, has advanced rapidly several times since its Neoglacial maximum. Two such advances, 1869 and 1948, are well constrained in time and space and are widely interpreted as glacier surges. During the 1869 advance an ice-dammed lake formed on th...