At Walvis Bay in Namibia, a scouring wind pushes sand dunes across an ancient mud flat. Sometimes when the dunes shift, the tracks of long-gone people and animals are exposed — much to the delight of Matthew Bennett, an ichnologist at Bournemouth University in England.
Ichnologists study tracks and traces and other signs of living creatures, including the footprints left by our human and pre-human ancestors. As rare and prized as hominin bones in the fossil record, footprints evoke a different response.
“A track is extremely emotive,” says Bennett. “If you see an ancient footprint, you are automatically drawn to it.” Indeed, at Walvis Bay the tracks emerge from the landscape as if they were just created. “One of the sites has [the tracks of] very small children in it,” he adds, “and there’s little doubt that they’re playing.”
