Archeologists Discover 100,000-Year-Old Human Footprints in Morocco

 Images from the site on the coast of the Larache city, on the Atlantic ocean. (Nature journal)
Images from the site on the coast of the Larache city, on the Atlantic ocean. (Nature journal)
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Archeologists Discover 100,000-Year-Old Human Footprints in Morocco

 Images from the site on the coast of the Larache city, on the Atlantic ocean. (Nature journal)
Images from the site on the coast of the Larache city, on the Atlantic ocean. (Nature journal)

Archaeologists in Morocco have discovered more than 80 human footprints described as the oldest in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean. The footprints are believed to be left by five individuals on a beach in northern Morocco, around 100,000 years ago.

According to AFP, the footprints were discovered on the coast of Larache, a city 90 kilometers south of Tangier, by archaeologists from Morocco, Spain, France, and Germany.

“The footprints were some of the world’s best-preserved human traces and the oldest in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean. The discovery opens new research horizons on prehistory in Morocco,” said Anass Sedrati, member of the research project.

This discovery was made coincidentally during a field mission in July 2022, as part of a scientific research project on the origins and dynamics of the boulders in the region.

Tests showed that “85 of the prints belong to at least five individuals who were likely searching for food in the sea,” said Sedrati.

The team suggests that those five individuals either lived in a region close to the site, or were only crossing the beach. “They were children, teens and adults,” the researchers noted.

The findings, published in the journal Nature in January, showed that these prints were preserved “in the upper area of the beach covered with sediments.”

Animal traces had also been discovered and efforts are ongoing to date them, according to Sedrati, who is the curator at the archaeological site of Lixus Larache.

In 2017, some homo sapiens remains dating back 300,000 years were unearthed in northwest Morocco, in the Jebel Irhoud region.

In other separate discoveries in recent years, prints dating back to the prehistoric era were found in Tangier, Tetouan, Rabat (north) and Essaouira (south).

The latest discovery achieved by the combined efforts of scientists from different specializations is “the first building block for in-depth research on the settlement and activity of Homo sapiens in Morocco,” Sedrati concluded.



'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
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'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)

A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers said Thursday.

The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry, in Oxfordshire, in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area and offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said.

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham, The AP reported.

Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked, herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 60 feet (18 meters) in length. A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious 9-meter predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago.

An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores.

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found," said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Nearly 30 years ago, 40 sets of footprints discovered in a limestone quarry in the area were considered one of the world's most scientifically important dinosaur track sites. But that area is mostly inaccessible now and there's limited photographic evidence because it predated the use of digital cameras and drones to record the findings.

The group that worked at the site this summer took more than 20,000 digital images and used drones to create 3-D models of the prints. The trove of documentation will aid future studies and could shed light on the size of the dinosaurs, how they walked and the speed at which they moved.

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out," said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum. "Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.”

The findings will be shown at a new exhibit at the museum and also broadcast on the BBC's “Digging for Britain” program next week.