23,000-year-old footprints in New Mexico reveal humans reached North America 10,000 years earlier than once believed.
  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
    0·
    3 days ago

    Odd; I thought the 13,000 years had been blown past over 5 years ago, and the current estimate was 23,000 to 24,000 years ago?

    This would seem to line up with the new number. Is this just someone new reporting on the established findings from 5 years ago, or are these new findings on new footprints that corroborate the other findings?

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      Is this just someone new reporting on the established findings from 5 years ago

      It looks like additional rigor has confirmed those findings from 5 years ago.

      The article says that originally they dated grass seeds in the same layer to 23k years but they can be effected by hard mineral deposits or something?

      So more recently they dated pollen, and did some other kind of luminescence testing. So now they have 3x dating methods that all align to 23k years.