But the balance of evidence shifted substantially with the 2023 paper.

The original finding was not a methodological artifact of the aquatic reservoir effect.

The independent dating approaches supported the extraordinary conclusion: people were at White Sands during the Last Glacial Maximum, approximately 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, and the footprints they left in the mud of Lake Otero’s shore have survived long enough for modern scientists to read them.

What The Numbers Actually Mean

It is worth slowing down here, because the significance of this age range is easy to state and hard to fully absorb.

Twenty-three thousand years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was in the grip of the Last Glacial Maximum.