The study of fossil footprints — ichnology, from the Greek word for track — is a discipline that has developed far more rapidly than most people outside the sciences realize.

Traditionally associated with dinosaur tracks, the field has expanded in recent decades to include the footprints of ancient humans and their close relatives, drawing on advances in three-dimensional surface scanning, photogrammetry, digital modeling, and the kind of biomechanical analysis that sports medicine and gait laboratories have developed for modern clinical purposes.

At White Sands, these methods have been applied systematically to the trackway surfaces.

Three-dimensional laser scanning captures the precise topography of individual footprints, recording depth, outline, and pressure distribution with a millimeter-scale precision that no hand measurement could match.

Photogrammetric methods — in which multiple overlapping photographs are processed by software to generate three-dimensional models — can document large trackway surfaces quickly and with high fidelity.

These digital records allow researchers to analyze the tracks at their leisure in the laboratory, to share data with collaborators around the world, and to preserve a record of surfaces that may degrade or be destroyed by continued weathering.