Oldest Human Footprints are 345,000 yrs old!

'Devils' Trails' Are World's Oldest Human Footprints
Oldest Footprints Are 345,000 Years Old
By CATHERINE BRAHIC Oct. 14, 2008

It's official: the oldest human footprints ever found are 345,000 years old, give or take 6000. Known as the "devils' trails", they have been preserved in volcanic ash atop the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy.

File photo of the fossilised footprints of primitive humans are seen on the side of the Roccamonfina...

File photo of the fossilised footprints of primitive humans are seen on the side of the Roccamonfina Volcano in southern Italy March 18, 2003. The fossilised prints known locally as "devils trails", belong to three early humans who were probably climbing down the side of the Volcano about 385,000 to 325,000 years ago. Scientists in Italy have said that these prints are the oldest footprints found so far of primitive humans.

The archeology site will be open tomorrow October 6 for visit. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters)More Photos

The prints were first described to the world by Paolo Mietto and colleagues of the University of Padova in Italy in 2003 after amateur archaeologists pointed them out.
At the time, the team estimated that the prints were anywhere between 385,000 and 325,000 years old, based on when the volcano was thought to have last erupted.

Now, Stéphane Scaillet and colleagues at the Laboratory of Climatic and Environmental Sciences, France, have used argon dating techniques to verify the prints' age.

"Their more rigorous methods confirm that these are the oldest human footprints ever found," says Mietto. The new findings also confirm that the owners of the footprints were Homo heidelbergensis.