Return, at the end, to the footprints themselves.

Not to the methods, not to the debates, not to the implications for migration models or the future of pre-Clovis research.

Return to the physical reality of what was found in the lakebed sediment of the Tularosa Basin.

Children were running.

The evidence for this is in the stride length and the depth of the toe impressions in the smaller tracks — the characteristic pressure distribution of a running rather than walking child, preserved in sediment that hardened before the impression could be smoothed away.

Running children leave a specific kind of track: the toe presses deeper, the heel is lighter or absent, the length of the step is disproportionately long for the size of the foot.