National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 245 | Footprints in Time

By Jess Repanshek - October 22nd, 2023

As you walk through the white gypsum sands of White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico, your footprints will likely be quickly erased by shifting winds. So it’s somewhat of a phenomenon of nature that the oldest footprints ever discovered in North America are not only found here — in perfect form, having withstood time and weather — but show that ancient humans lived here much earlier than previously believed.

A research team from the U.S. Geological Survey earlier this month strengthened their findings released in 2021 that dated these footprints to as much as 23,000 years old. That finding erased previous theories that humans first arrived in North America some 11,000 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age.

This week the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks with key researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey team about their initial analysis of the footprints as well as their follow-up study that confirmed the age dating…and what it all means to our long-sought understanding of human colonization on this continent.

0:02 National Parks Traveler introduction
0:12 Episode Intro with Kurt Repanshek
1:01 Vista Verde - Tim Heintz - The Sounds of Peaks, Plateaus and Canyons
1:24 Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation
1:46 Potrero Group
2:13 Friends of Acadia
2:43 Footprints in Time with Lynn Riddick
13:37 Whispering Winds - Grant Geissman - Sounds of the Caribbean
13:50 NPT Promo
14:02 Interior Federal Credit Union
14:27 Yosemite Conservancy
14:49 Grand Teton National Park Foundation
15:22 Footprints in Time with Lynn Riddick Continues
40:38 Otter Point - Nature’s Symphony - The Sounds of Acadia
40:48 Great Smoky Mountains Association
41:09 The Everglades Foundation
41:21 Washington’s National Park Fund
41:57 Footprints in Time with Lynn Riddick Continues
57:21 The Horsemen - Randy Petersen - The Spirit of South Dakota
57:41 Episode Closing
58:06 Orange Tree Productions
58:38 Splitbeard Productions
58:50 National Parks Traveler footer

White Sands National Park

National Parks Traveler Podcast

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