“Ghostly footprints”. This is how experts describe the recent discovery of mysterious traces in the salt flats of the Utah desertin the United States.

Why define them this way? because they turn around visible only after each rainwhen they fill with humidity and take on a darker color and then disappear again after drying as soon as the sun rises, published life science.

One piece of information to highlight is the estimated age of these 88 adult and child footprints, which they would have between 10,000 and 12,000 years. Therefore, they may belong to the last ice age of Pleistocene.

As was the mysterious discovery

It all happened last July chance. It so happens that the researchers were going to another archaeological site near Hill Air Force Base in the Great Salt Lake Desert, bordering Nevada, detailed the site.

Before there was a body of water that has dried up slowly but left a lot of salt. In this case, the traces found belong to the inhabitants of the area in that transition process, when the lake was a wetland.

The discovery of many ancient footprints is a “once in a lifetime find”Anya Kitterman, Hill Air Force Base’s cultural resources manager, said in a statement. And she added: “We got a lot more than we expected.”

At the moment, the discovery has not been published because archaeologists they are still analyzing the tracks.

The story behind the “ghostly footprints”

The great desert of the salt lake It was once covered by a large salt lake similar to nearby Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, hence the desert’s name.

The the old lake has dried up slowly due to changes in the earth’s climate caused by the end of the last ice age and left the salt that once dissolved in the water.

During this step, the area was briefly a large wetland that was occupied by man until 10,000 years agoaccording to the statement.

During this time, conditions would have been perfect for creating the “ghost prints,” experts said life science.

It happens that people walked into shallow water, and the sand quickly filled their footprints. But underneath there was a layer of mud that has kept the footprint intact after filling.

And it is this feature that makes them indistinguishable in the surrounding landscape.

This region is a hot spot for ancient human footprints. Less than a mile from where the footprints were discovered, another research team discovered a hunter-gatherer camp dating back to 12,000 years ago.

The people who left their footprints could have lived there.

In that space, the archaeological finds included a ancient fireplace, stone tools used for cooking, a pile of over 2,000 animal bones and charred tobacco seedsrepresenting the first evidence of the consumption of this product in humans.