Matalascañas footprints

 I had intended to cover all the key Neanderthal discoveries made over last couple of centuries, but I find myself falling behind, such is the pace of archaeological discovery.

When the paper by Mayoral et al. (2021), detailing the oldest Neanderthal footprints ever found, appeared online this week, I couldn’t help but report it, as I found it so interesting.

Overlapping footprints of adult Neanderthals and their children, at Matalascañas. These have been, characterised in the media as ‘dancing children’. Photo credit: Randall (2021).

 

Drone image of Matalascañas beach. The surface with Neanderthal footprints lies before the headland in the distance. Photo credit: Turismo Almonte (2020).

Here’s the abstract:

“The biological and ethological information of the ancient hominin groups when there are no bone remains, is provided by the study of their fossil footprints, which show us certain "frozen" moments of their existence.

Footprints provide invaluable data on the number individuals who made them and on their biological (stature, age, body mass) and biomechanical (posture, gait, speed) characteristics. However, and despite important recent discoveries, the number of sites with such footprints remains relatively uncommon compared to archaeological or palaeoanthropological sites, especially for those occupied by Neandertals.

This is the case of the Iberian Peninsula, where there are several localities with osteological and technological remains of Neandertals, but only one potential poorly preserved footprint in the dune complex from Catalán Bay (28,000 years) at Gibraltar.

At the June of 2020 as a consequence of the intense winter storms which, together with the action of spring

tidal ranges, left an extensive trampled surface area of just over 6000 m² exposed at Matalascañas (Huelva, SW Spain). This fact has conditioned, and affects, notably, its study, since being inside the intertidal zone, it is daily covered by water and sandy sediments, which from one day to another can cover all or part of the surface exposed for free observation. This leaves open the possibility that additional tracks may be unearthed nearby. Some mammal and bird footprints were identified preliminary there. Among all those tracks, several hominin footprints have been found and they are the object of study of this work.

Here we report the discovery of 87 footprints attributed to Neandertals on the site of Matalascañas, on the

Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Doñana shoreline, Spain). After describing the site and in particular its stratigraphy, we focused on the description of the Neandertal footprints in order to obtain information on the number of individuals that left them and their biological characteristics (age, stature) by using morphometric data.”

Building on the work of Zazo (2005) and Neto de Carvalho et al. (2020 a and b), the footprints have been dated to approximately 106,000 BP.

The isolated footprints represent a mixed group of children, juveniles and adults walking parallel to the shore. It is postulated, that they were involved in foraging activity. The footprints consist of 7 footprints are associated with children, 15 with adolescents and 9 with adults. How many individuals this represents is uncertain.

Neanderthal footprints from Mayoral et. al (2021), adapted from their Fig. 4.

References

Devereux, C. (2021). Neanderthal child’s dancing feet leave a mark on Spanish beach. The Times, at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/neanderthal-childs-dancing-feet-leave-a-mark-on-spanish-beach-59tqnxn3c accessed 26/09/2022

Mayoral, E., Díaz-Martínez, I., Duveau, J., Santos, A., Ramírez, A.R., Morales, J.A., Morales, L.A. and Díaz-Delgado, R., (2021). Tracking late Pleistocene Neandertals on the Iberian coast. Scientific reports, 11(1), pp.1-12.

Neto de Carvalho, C. et al. First vertebrate tracks and palaeoenvironment in a MIS-5 context in the Doñana National Park (Huelva, SW Spain). Quat. Sci. Rev. 243, 106508 (2020).

Neto de Carvalho, C. et al. Paleoecological implications of large-sized wild boar tracks recorded during the last interglacial (Mis 5) at Huelva (Sw Spain). Palaios 35, 512–523 (2020).

Randall, I. (2021). An ele-phantastic finding! Fossilised footprint tracks discovered in Spain reveal a prehistoric NURSERY where elephants raised their newborn offspring 129,000 years ago. The Daily mail, at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9998165/Fossils-Footprints-discovered-Spain-reveal-NURSERY-elephants-129-000-years-ago.html accessed 26/09/2022

Turismo Almonte (2020). Matalascañas. At: https://www.turismodealmonte.es/en/destinations/matalascanas/ accessed 26/09/2022

Zazo, C. et al. Landscape evolution and geodynamic controls in the Gulf of Cadiz (Huelva coast, SW Spain) during the Late Quaternary. Geomorphology 68, 269–290 (2005).