Those Who Walked Before tells the story of the exciting discoveries and subsequent research on Ice Age animal and human footprints found at New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, including what is considered the world’s longest known fossilized human trackway. Co-written by David F. Bustos, the park’s resource program manager, who has investigated human and megafaunal footprints there for more than a decade; British geoscientist Matthew R. Bennett, one of the world’s leading authorities on fossil trackways; and archaeologist Daniel Odess, part of the larger team that investigated the prints, the book brings this remarkable story vividly to life. From Bustos’ early discoveries of the tracks of Pleistocene mammoths, giant ground sloths, big cats, dire wolves, and camels to later finds of human footprints apparently interacting with these ancient animals, the authors’ firsthand accounts make for a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking read.
The book includes fascinating discussions of some of the oldest proposed human sites in the Americas, possible migration routes, track morphology, recording and imaging techniques, and the discoveries and challenges at White Sands.
While the footprints suggested humans and Ice Age animals shared this landscape, multiple dating methods supported an age of roughly 21,000 to 23,000 years for some of the human prints, as reported in Science in 2021 and 2023. Replete with black-and-white photographs and beautiful illustrations by paleoartist Karen Carr that bring these ancient scenes to life, the book is written for a general audience and includes a postscript that delves more deeply into geological terms, methods, mammoths, and more. As the prints are rapidly being lost to erosion, work continues at White Sands to discover, record, and preserve these fascinating tracks in collaboration with Indigenous groups.
