LIFE ON THE PLAYA: ICHNOLOGICAL FILM CLIPS FROM LATE PLEISTOCENE NEW MEXICO, USA

White Sands National Park preserves extensive ichnological evidence of humans and animals interacting at the end of the Pleistocene. Unlike typical fossil localities and archaeological sites, what is preserved are thousands of footprints made during the last ice age. Trackways extend for hundreds, or even thousands of meters across deposits of fine-grained gypsiferous sand, recording human/megafauna interaction through ichnological proxies, allowing insight into the behavioral ecology of individual taxa and the ecology of an extinct environment. Each set of tracks is like a film clip, and each tells its own story. Here an individual human set out on a walk carrying a child on their hip, then returned alone sometime later. A mammoth crossed their tracks and was unconcerned, but a ground sloth reacted by standing up to scent the air and look around, and then changed direction. Over there we see someone walking with a limp. And people hunting a giant sloth. And groups of people, both young and old, walking together. And children jumping in a puddle. These tracks provide an emotional connection for park visitors and a remarkable source of information about interactions among and between humans and now-extinct ice-age animals. The tracks are being exposed by and subsequently lost to widespread deflation. We use a variety of techniques to investigate and document these globally significant resources which are probably the richest source of Pleistocene tracks in the Americas.