These children were not walking carefully along a muddy shore.

They were running, the way children run — because the mud was interesting, because there was somewhere to get to, because the animals ahead of them were frightening or exciting, or for no reason at all except that children run.

Adults walked beside them.

The larger footprints show the measured, even stride of adults moving at a moderate pace — not hurrying, not struggling with difficult terrain, but covering ground with the efficiency of people who knew where they were going and had reason to go there.

Some of the adult tracks suggest individuals of substantial size; others suggest smaller individuals.

The group whose tracks are preserved in any given trackway surface was not demographically uniform — it was a mixed group of the kind that human communities typically comprise.