The exposures that have been documented represent those sections of the ancient lakebed that the specific pattern of dune movement has brought to the surface.

Additional trackway surfaces, additional dating horizons, additional evidence of human and animal presence during the Last Glacial Maximum and adjacent periods, may exist in abundance beneath the dunes that have not yet been uncovered.

This is not speculation — it is the straightforward implication of the geology.

The dune field is a storage system as much as it is a covering system, and what it has stored from the thousands of years during which it was accumulating over the lakebed sediments may include far more evidence of the ancient occupation than has yet been seen.

The future of research at White Sands will involve both continuing work on the surfaces that are currently accessible and developing methods to investigate the buried landscape more systematically.

Non-invasive subsurface sensing, improved dating methods that require smaller sample sizes and can be applied to a wider range of materials, and the development of research partnerships between the park service, university researchers, and Indigenous communities are all part of how the investigation is likely to develop over the coming decades.