Just before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, Carlos Neto de Carvalho and his wife, Ilchan, were walking along Monte Crerigo Beach in southern Portugal. They stumbled over a series of ancient Neanderthal footprints as a couple of geologists and geologists scrambled over rocky outcrops and old, collapsed cliffs.
“It was an early morning on a sunny day and had the perfect light to check out the truck,” Neto de Carvalho told Live Science in an email. But when they took their colleagues to the site and took pictures of the track, they said, “We were trapped in a sudden rise in the tide and had to swim and climb 15 meters. [49 feet] Neto de Carvalho has almost vertical cliffs in all gear.
Their bold adventures paid off. Researchers eventually discovered five trackways in Monte Clerigo, consisting of 26 footprints, significantly increasing expert understanding of Neanderthal activities along the Atlantic Coast 78,000 years ago.
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“The fossil records of hominin footprints, especially those attributed to Neanderthals, are extremely rare,” wrote Neto de Calvaljo and colleagues in a study published July 3rd in the Journal of Science, as the footprint of Neanderthals is nearly identical to that of humans.
In this case, modern humans were not in Europe at the time, so the footprint was identified as Neanderthals. Rather, evidence suggests that, in addition to some previous, unsuccessful attempts, Homo Sapiens began leaving Africa about 50,000 years ago.
There were only six sets of previously discovered Neanderthal footprints. In addition to the Monte Crerigo truck, researchers reported new discoveries of a single footprint from Praeduteiro in southern Portugal, bringing the total number of trackways found in Europe to eight.
In Monte Clerigo, ancient footprints were created near the coastline. The date of optically stimulated emission was last measured when minerals were exposed to sunlight, placing the footprint in the 83,000-73,000 year range.
Related: DNA of “Thorin”, one of the last Neanderthals, finally sequences, revealing inbreeding and 50,000 years of genetic separation
Based on the size and shape of the Monte Crerigo print, the researchers believe that an adult Neanderthal man walked up and down the dunes, accompanied by a child between the ages of 7 and 9 and a toddler under the age of 2.
“The fact that Monte Clerigo’s infant footprints were found along with those of older adults suggests that children exist when adults engage in daily activities,” the researchers wrote.
The trackway is far away towards the coast, so it is possible that these Neanderthals foraged food such as shellfish. But another possibility was that Neanderthals practiced ambush hunting and stalking horses, such as horses, deer or horses, as some of the Neanderthals were “overprinted” on large mammal trucks.
“On the Montecrerigo site, the presence of footprints attributed to at least one man, one child and one toddler negotiate the steep slopes of the dunes and allow us to speculate that they are in close proximity to the campsite,” the researchers wrote.
However, if the Neanderthals established a camp in Monte Clerigo, no evidence remains today.
“The presence of Neanderthals in these environments was intentional, even seasonal,” the researchers wrote, “benefiting from ambush hunting and stalking prey in a sturdy dune landscape.”
Neanderthal Quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
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