How ancient footprints shed light on America’s first teenagers | Robin McKie

Adolescents always liked hanging out together, as new evidence of human activity from more than 20,000 years ago reveals

The White Sands of New Mexico have been a popular tourist attraction for a remarkably long time. Modern travellers come to gaze at the vistas of glistening, pure dunes of gypsum that stretch for miles in all directions.

But previous visitors had very different goals. Thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens came here to hunt giant sloths, mammoths and other megafauna. In doing so, they left signs of their presence whose analysis now promises to transform our understanding of the populating of our planet.