Walking in mud: Remarkable Pleistocene human trackways from White Sands National Park (New Mexico)
Walking in mud: Remarkable Pleistocene human trackways from White Sands National Park (New Mexico)
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DOI：
10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106610
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发表时间：
2020-12-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Reynolds, Sally C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bennett, Matthew R.;Bustos, David;Reynolds, Sally C.
白色沙滩国家公园的人类足迹记录了超过1.5公里的往返旅程，形成了世界上最长的更新世晚期双人轨道。一个青少年或小的成年女性进行了两次旅行，至少相隔几个小时，至少在一个方向携带一个年幼的孩子。尽管巨大的地懒和哥伦比亚猛犸在往返途中横切它们，但人类的足迹没有显示出捕食者/猎物意识的变化。相比之下，巨型地懒的足迹显示出与人类捕食者意识一致的行为，而猛犸的足迹则没有表现出这种明显的担忧。人类足迹的形态是可变的，并表现出左右不对称，这可能是由于携带儿童。我们使用基于客观轨迹轮廓分析的方法来探索这种形态变异性，这些方法添加到可在其他人类足迹地点使用的分析工具包中。轨道的绝对数量和它们显着的形态变异性的影响，使用更小的样本，在典型的足迹网站更常见的推断的可靠性。一个结论是，进行可靠的生物特征推断所需的足迹数量比通常假设的要多。(C)2020爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有。
Human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than one and a half kilometres of an out- and-return journey and form the longest Late Pleistocene-age double human trackway in the world. An adolescent or small adult female made two trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a young child in at least one direction. Despite giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth transecting them between the outbound and return journeys, the human tracks show no changes indicative of predator/prey awareness. In contrast, the giant ground sloth tracks show behaviour consistent with human predator awareness, while mammoth tracks show no such apparent concern. The human footprints are morphologically variable and exhibit left-right asymmetry, which might be due to child carrying. We explore this morphological variability using methods based on the analysis of objective track outlines, which add to the analytical toolkit available for use at other human footprint sites. The sheer number of tracks and their remarkable morphological variability have implications for the reliability of inferences made using much smaller samples as are more common at typical footprint sites. One conclusion is that the number of footprints required to make reliable biometric inferences is greater than often assumed. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.