From the paper Walking in mud: Remarkable Pleistocene human trackways from White Sands National Park (New Mexico) [1]:

> We describe a long prehistoric human trackway (1.5 km) of Late Pleistocene age at White Sands National Park (New Mexico, USA).

> The trackway indicates two journeys. The outbound tracks are crosscut by giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth tracks.

> The precise geochronology of the tracks remains uncertain... The most parsimonious interpretation of this window is that track formation occurred before 10 k BP, however the upper biostratigraphic limit depends on the arrival date for human colonisers in the Americas and more specifically at WHSA [White Sands].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...

"What’s more, research yet to be published tells of children playing in puddles formed in giant sloth tracks, jumping between mammoth tracks and of hunting and butchery."

This is a delightful image! I hope this research stands up to review.

>what is even more remarkable is that they followed their own trackway home again a few hours later. [...] Between the outward and return journeys, a sloth and a mammoth crossed the outward trackway. The footprints of the return journey in turn cross those animal tracks.

a crowded place it was.

Given the shifting baselines phenomenon, I wonder how much less life we see on a typical basis, even in "wilderness", than we would have in the past.

Dusk and dawn are good times to see wildlife, especially during the pandemic, and even in "suburbia."

I moved out of my city and into a rural town a few years ago. I am still amazed at the volume and variety of wildlife out here - and trying to grow a garden during the pandemic made me appreciate Elmer Fudd's take on wascally wabbits!

Same here, though "field" rather than town. ! I couldn't believe just how _loud_ the dawn chorus can be. The borage and calendula hum with bees as well. It's helped my anxiety about the planet to at least have this little oasis.