Ice Age Children Frolicked In 'giant Sloth Puddles' 11,000 Years Ago, Footprints Reveal

Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. “All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is,” Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science. Read more.

More Posts from Muneaj and Others

muneaj

2 years ago

@positiveseed

4K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

4 days until wet rat wednesday

171K notes View Post

muneaj

1 year ago

nothing but respect for my trans cow best friends

88K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

Can’t sleep. Finally caved and made a Two Birds edit. Decided to go a different route.

1K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

128K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

1, 2, 3

13K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

the queen dying is taking attention away from the true great loss of the last few days: thurston waffles' passing. fuck dusty old monarchs, at 15 years my baby just wanted to yell and eat shrimps and he still had a positive impact on more lives than the royal family ever did

rest in peace sweet prince ❤️❤️❤️

EDIT: i'm sorry I gave the impression I'm Thurston's owner, but I'm not! I wrote "my baby" cuz he is, really, everyone's fluffy baby thanks to the gift his dad and his mom gave us by turning him into a cat celebrity. go to @thurstonwaffles and send your love to them ❤️❤️❤️

87K notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

clay-colored billbug, Sphenophorus aequalis! she is so cute....

943 notes View Post

muneaj

2 years ago

you've been told all your childhood that it's rude to interrupt. and now you have grown up and speak only when there is a pause in the conversation. but suddenly you understand that neurotypicals are all interrupting each other and this is quite normal. but you are already used to not interrupting and waiting for a pause in the conversation and do not understand how to normally maintain a conversation in order to talk, but at the same time not to seem rude

51K notes View Post

muneaj

3 weeks ago