Footprints Preserve Pleistocene Hunt?

[Charl]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...erved-in-incredible-fossilized-tracks/558797/

Footprints preserve terminal Pleistocene hunt? Human-sloth interactions in North America | Science Advances

 

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[Charl]

What a mind blowing discovery this actually is. Fun studying the diagrams supplementing the study, showing the density of the tracks and the pattern displayed. Where human and sloth tracks converge, for instance, the sloth tracks display what is called a "flailing circle", a sudden interruption in the linear track, changing to evidence of the animal pivoting on its heels, and facing different directions, as you might expect if suddenly surrounded and fending off predators, flailing in the process.

If their interpretation of the site is correct, it's one of the most spectacular examples of an activity frozen in time. That's what trace fossils can do that fossils of organisms cannot. They preserve moments in time, living activity. In this case the moment of time is a hunting scene on a terminal Pleistocene landscape in North America. The best they could do pinpointing the time was Clovis era. You can visualize the scene by examining the diagrams here and following the legend that accompanies those diagrams:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2018/04/23/4.4.eaar7621.DC1/aar7621_SM.pdf

Has to be one of the best trace fossils ever discovered, capturing both our own species, and a brief moment of time in a Pleistocene landscape. Finding Paleo points is always an exciting way to grab the distant past and unite it with a present moment. Walking up on a preserved moment in time of those ancient hunters is flat out awesome.

 

[archer66]

Wow!

 

[monsterrack]

Now that is a cool find. !!!!!!!

 

[Kray Gelder]

Really cool, and well documented find! Thanks for posting that. Must have taken some nerve to take on something like that. Mmmmm, roast sloth.