I've just seen two separate stories on ancient footprint discoveries. The first was a set of 260-some dinosaur footprints that looked very similar, one set found in Brazil and the other in Cameroon in Africa. The kicker? Cameroon and Brazil used to be side by side way back in the early stages of the planet in a land mass called Gondwana, the remnants of which make up about two-thirds of the land mass in the world today. It includes South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, India and Antarctica. The fascinating part of these footprints is that they could have been made by the same animal, as dinosaurs back then could have easily crossed from Cameroon to Brazil without getting their feet wet.
The second footprint was a human footprint discovered in the 1980s in New Mexico, that they dated between 290 million and 248 million years ago. The reason for the dating was because it was allegedly found in the Permian layer, which goes back that far. The only problem is the latest estimate on when humans first walked on earth is 3 million years ago. One caveat on this is there is a lot of internet speculation that this footprint is a hoax. I haven't found anything yet to either confirm or refute the authenticity of this footprint, but the linked story seems to refute it.
The second footprint was a human footprint discovered in the 1980s in New Mexico, that they dated between 290 million and 248 million years ago. The reason for the dating was because it was allegedly found in the Permian layer, which goes back that far. The only problem is the latest estimate on when humans first walked on earth is 3 million years ago. One caveat on this is there is a lot of internet speculation that this footprint is a hoax. I haven't found anything yet to either confirm or refute the authenticity of this footprint, but the linked story seems to refute it.
