Footprint #8 is a particularly clear example, preserving the impressions of four toes.
Image: Susan Duffy, University of York
Mud larking
Once the footprints had been recorded, they were studied by Dr Isabelle De Groote at Liverpool John Moores University. ‘These are clearly human footprints,’ she observes. ‘In the best-preserved prints you can see the heel, the arch of the foot and then the ball of the foot and the toes. Humans are the only ones who leave footprints like these. Other primates have a divergent big toe – that is, one coming out at the side. And humans do a very distinctive heel strike when they walk, rolling off onto the ball of the foot.
‘Both small prints and large prints were present. What I was able to do was measure the length and the width of the footprint in order to estimate how many individuals were there. Over the whole surface there were a huge number of hollows, and I ended up identifying a total of 49 that were clearly footprints. They were made by at least five different people, and there were at least two or three children in the group, the smallest of which can be estimated to have been about 3ft tall.
‘The largest prints, of which there are three, come from a single individual with the equivalent of a modern UK size 8 foot and a height of about 5ft 8in. We believe that this is likely to be a male. A slightly smaller individual could be an adult female, or perhaps a young adult male. There’s no reason why we should not think of them as a family, but because we’re only seeing the prints of a few individuals we cannot be certain whether it was a single family unit or a larger group.’
This is an extract, but you can read the full feature in CA 289
The footprints were carefully recorded, but the nature of the sediments meant they could not be lifted and have been completely eroded away. It is hoped more will be found and, given enough time and resources, can be preserved.
The scientific publication is available online at
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%Fjournal.pone.0088329The excellent Natural History Museum exhibition Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story provides an opportunity to learn more about the footprints, and to see all the early human remains discovered in Britain. It runs until 28 September. For more details of the exhibition, see
www.nhm.ac.uk/britainmillionyears http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/first-impressions-discovering-the-earliest-human-footprints-in-europe.htm