Oldest human footprints to date in N. America found in Canada

OTTAWA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have discovered human footprints left 13,000 years ago on the west coast of Canada, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

The researchers determined the year by performing radiocarbon dating on the samples, which were collected across the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia. That would make them the oldest preserved human footprints in North America.

The team also suggested that the 29 human footprints were left by two adults and a child.

Researchers first found the footprints beneath the beach surface in 2014, and discovered several more on subsequent trips in 2015 and 2016, according to the study.

Lead author Duncan McLaren said in a press releases that the people who left the footprints were seafarers who inhabited the area during the tail end of the last major Ice Age.

"It is possible that the coast was one of the means by which people entered the Americas at that time," McLaren, who is an anthropologist from the Hakai Institute at the University of Victoria, was quoted by the New York Times as saying.

This study supports the idea that early Americans traveled south along the west coast, following the migration over a land bridge from Asia to Alaska, a theory that was concluded by previous studies. Enditem