Re: Mexican Laetoli?



bob_keeter wrote:
[snip]
> Philosophy aside, I looked at your link. Those "overhead pictures just
> about drive the last nail in the coffin for me as far as as the
> footprints being hominid vs some sort of chimera of other animals
> footprints. The one "loose end" is what you suggested before. If the
> substrate is less than fully "set", they could be modern humans. And
> you know that is a REALLY easy test to run. . . . .
>
> Regards
> bk

Yes, there's a lot more in that link than what's been presented in most
news reports. I'm not so concerned with the substrate issue as with the
prints themselves. Some of them have a definite "look" of human
prints, but others are more equivocal (one of the "child" prints looks
more like a webbed duck foot to me). I do realize that, in such
ashfall, a perfect human footprint is unlikely to occur in many
instances. Also, looking at the illustration of the three mapped
areas (image 18 of 40), I would question the length of any particular
sequence of "human" tracks. Tracks at Laetoli clearly show a
continuous trace with dozens of biped tracks leading in a continuous
line for several dozen yards. The maps they show of the Toluquilla
prints (and there's no way to check the identification of species from
these maps) don't seem to display any sequential trail of prints for
any great length. Mostly, the longest "trails" seem to be on the order
of a 3-4 print sequence leading nowhere. I'd really prefer more
details on these tracks. But, in their defense, as shown on this
illustration, there's a lot more area of the Xalnene ash that hasn't
been mapped yet, at least when these maps were drawn. So maybe a good
trail of striding humans eventually can be demonstrated. In the
meantime, I will say the Toquilla site has good potential to be a very
important discovery, and it might eventually be shown that it is just
as they have interpreted, I'm not entirely convinced by this
presentation.

Dar

.

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