Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum
2021/09/23 by Matthew R. Bennett, David Bustos, Jeffrey S. Pigati +12 · 1 voice · 204 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Beringia #Biology #Chronology #Colonization #Ecology #Fauna #Geography #Geology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Glacial period #Holocene #Last Glacial Maximum #Megafauna #National park #Paleontology #Physical geography #Pleistocene #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Quaternary #Radiocarbon dating #Range (aeronautics)
paper · doi:10.1126/science.abg7586
published in Science 373(6562), 1528-1531 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2021/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.
Cited by
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- The Pleistocene footprints are younger than we thought: correcting the radiocarbon dates of Ruppia seeds, Tularosa Basin, New Mexico
- Paleolake geochronology supports Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) age for human tracks at White Sands, New Mexico
- Evidence of artefacts made of giant sloth bones in central Brazil around the last glacial maximum
- Possible shod-hominin tracks on South Africa’s Cape coast
- Preservation biases in the fossil record distort species ecological niche and distribution models
- The ichnology of White Sands (New Mexico): Linear traces and human footprints, evidence of transport technology?
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- A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America
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- Human Occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ∼37,000 Years Ago
- Late quaternary biotic homogenization of North American mammalian faunas
- Late date of human arrival to North America: Continental scale differences in stratigraphic integrity of pre-13,000 BP archaeological sites
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