Mexican footprints in the Mammoth Trumpet

[Daryl Habel]

Pursuant to the earlier Palanth forum discussion of the alleged 40,000-year-old Mexican footprints HERE, the ongoing debate between Gonzalez et al. and Renne et al. over the genuine nature and dating of the "footprints" has moved onto the pages of the Mammoth Trumpet.  According to a news story reported Tuesday (yesterday) in the (Columbus, Ohio) Dispatch.com

Cloud of scholarly dust rises over ancient footprints claim
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
BRADLEY T. LEPPER
 
Are the footprints of surprisingly ancient Americans preserved in 40,000-year-old volcanic ash in southern Mexico? In December, an article in the journal Science cast a cloud of doubt over that claim.

The authors, Michael Waters and Paul Renne, argue that the ash dated to 1.3 million years ago, much too old for humans on this continent, and that the so-called footprints were nothing more than marks made by the tools of modern workers quarrying the stone with crowbars.

Now, Silvia Gonzalez, an archaeologist from Liverpool John Moores University, and several members of her research team have published their data and interpretations in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. Based on their results, the case is far from closed.

According to the researchers, the early dates for the ash are wrong. They note that the overlying deposits range in age from 9,000 to 40,000 years, with no evidence of significant breaks in the sequence.

Moreover, an article in the March issue of the Mammoth Trumpet states that Gonzalez and her team have dated lake sediments below the ash layer to about 100,000 years ago, which would mean the ash had to be considerably younger than the date reported in Science....(more)..

Added later.  Contrary to what Bradley Lepper's story in the Columbus Dispatch says, the Renne et al. paper dating the 'footprint' ash to about 1.3 million years appeared in the journal Nature HERE, not in Science.

The Columbus Dispatch story can be read in its entirety CLICK HERE.  Without access to the March 2006 issue of Mammoth Trumpet, I'm in-the-dark as to how much real "news" is here, but if I have read the Gonzalez et al. article in the February 2006 Quaternary Science Reviews HERE correctly, previous attempts to OSL date the lake sediments underlying the 'footprint' ash failed to give satisfactory results.  So if my comprehension of all this is correct, the "news" reported in Mammoth Trumpet is the successful dating of the lake sediments underlying the 'footprint' ash to about 100 ka.  If anyone having access to the March 2006 Mammoth Trumpet would care to comment, it would be much appreciated.

Dar

[Daryl Habel]

The Mammoth Trumpet article is:

Largent, Floyd. 2006. Toluquilla, Mexico: American Laetoli? Mammoth Trumpet 21(2): 17-20.

(Thanks very much to L.O., who placed it in my e-mail box). 
Essentially, it is a 4-page news review of the controversy surrounding the alleged 40,000-year-old "footprints", beginning with a description of the circumstances of discovery and continuing through the arguments pro and con that have been presented to date, most recently Renne et al. in the December 2005 issue of Nature and the February 2006 Quaternary Science Reviews article by Gonzalez et al..  As I suspected, the only "real" news here is the announcement of new (unpublished, at present) dates for the underlying lake sediments.  Quoting from Largent 2006:20...

"Meanwhile, Gonzalez and her team are waiting in the wings with new data, which include soon-to-be-published dates in the range of 100,000 CALYBP for lake sediments below the ash.  "I think this is a compelling argument that something is wrong with the 1.3-million-year-old date," she says confidently.

The Mammoth Trumpet article suggests you should CLICK HERE for more information, but this link leads to the Center for the Study of the First Americans home page.  However, by following the "Research" icon
CLICK HERE, and scrolling down the page through the ongoing projects, there is more information about the Center's project at Toluquilla, including a link to the December 2005 Renne et al. article in Nature.

On a final note, the Mammoth Trumpet article concludes what we all know the issue to be: "Are the depressions at Toluquilla really footprints?"  Although Largent quotes pro and con from various principals involved in the controversy, it's clear that more study is needed.

Dar