© CYNTHIA LIUTKUS-PIERCEThe Engare Sero footprint site. An eruption of Oldoinyo L'engai, the volcano in the background, produced the ash in which the footprints were preserved.
More than 400 indents were left by bare human feet in Engare Sero, Tanzania, originally spotted by members of a local Maasai community more than a decade ago and their age and formation
described in 2016.
Geological analyses revealed the prints, all preserved on the same surface of hardened ash from nearby volcano
Ol Doinyo Lengai, were made sometime between 6000 and 19,000 years ago, placing them around the Late Pleistocene.
Now, paleoanthropological analyses,
published in the journal
Scientific Reports, explore what the fossilised tracks reveal about the people who made them.
"Footprints are rare components of the human fossil record," says lead author Kevin Hatala from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, US, "yet they can preserve exceptional snapshots of behaviour in our distant past."
Comment: Winter makes a comeback as parts of Scotland are blanketed in snow