These dozens of fossilized footprints were discovered by pure chance at the beginning of July in the bed of a dry river by two researchers, Daron Duke and Thomas Urban, who were driving towards the military base Hill Air Force Base, located in the Great Salt Lake Desert of Utah.

The two men were discussing... footprints.

"We were wondering: + What would it look like? +", explains Mr. Duke to AFP.

"And he replied: + A little what you see through the window +" of the car.

The two scientists have unearthed 88 footprints over 12,000 years old belonging to adults and children.

"Their appearance varies, from simple discolored spots on the ground to small lumps of dirt appearing around and on top of them. But they look like footprints," he continues.

Several days of painstaking excavations were then necessary, sometimes prone, to ensure that what they observed was as old as they thought.

"It looks like barefoot people walked in shallow water where there was a muddy underlay," says Daron Duke.

"As soon as they took their foot off, the sand settled down and preserved (the footprint) perfectly."

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The researcher from the Far Western Anthropological Research Group, located in Nevada, was present in the region to find evidence of prehistoric settlements of the Native American people Shoshones, whose descendants still live in the western United States.

"Dazzled"

He had brought in Cornell University archaeologist Thomas Urban because of his expertise in tracing ancient settlements, especially after his discovery of 23,000-year-old human footprints in the desert of White Sands National Park in New York. New Mexico last year.

These new fossils join a host of other finds in the area, including stone tools, evidence of tobacco use, bird bones and remains of encampments, which are beginning to reveal a more complete picture. Shoshones and their continued presence in the area for 13,000 years.

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"This is where (these indigenous people) lived, and this is where they still reside," says Urban, who considers finding the footprints a career highlight.

"Once I realized I was digging up a human footprint, seeing toes, it was in pristine condition, I was blown away," he recalls.

And sharing this discovery with the distant descendants of the people who left these footprints has been extremely rewarding, he says.

"The connection between something so distant and so human, I think it touches everyone in one way or another," he concludes.

© 2022 AFP