- Bayern hit nine, Real Madrid and Liverpool win as new Champions League kicks off
- Author John Grisham joins bid to save Texas death row inmate
- Venezuela arrests fourth American over alleged 'plot' against Maduro
- 'Happy' Mbappe strikes on Madrid Champions League debut win over Stuttgart
- Man Utd hit Barnsley for seven in League Cup rout
- Dolphins quarterback Tagovailoa facing concussion layoff
- Stylish Liverpool strut past Milan in confident Champions league opener
- Kane scores four as Bayern put nine past Zagreb in the Champions League
- Mbappe strikes on Madrid Champions League debut win over Stuttgart
- More than 3,600 food packaging chemicals found in human bodies
- Harris calls Trump as assassination scare sparks tensions
- Dow edges down from record as some eye a smaller Fed rate cut
- Sommer vows Inter will 'defend with all we have' to stop Haaland
- Report links meatpacking companies to 'war on nature' in Brazil
- Bolivian ex-leader Morales, backers set out on weeklong protest march
- Smith grateful to McCullum for launching his England career
- Arizona to ask court to rule on voting rights
- Villa make perfect start on Champions League return after 41-year absence
- Israeli supply chain infiltration likely behind Hezbollah pager blasts: analysts
- Rodgers backs Celtic to be 'really competitive' in Champions League
- Spacewalk an 'emotional experience' for private astronauts
- Storm Boris toll rises to 22 in central Europe
- Nine dead, 2,800 wounded as Lebanon's Hezbollah hit by pager blasts
- Boeing, union resume talks as strike empties Seattle plants
- Over 3,600 food packaging chemicals found in human bodies
- Australia's Zampa accepts Ashes chances remote as 100th ODI looms
- UN General Assembly debates call for end to Israeli occupation
- Marseille complete signing of French international Rabiot
- Easterby to fill in as Ireland coach while Farrell is with the Lions
- Hezbollah in Lebanon hit by wave of deadly pager blasts
- Postecoglou taken aback by criticism of his second season success claim
- US, European stocks rise on retail sales, rate cut expectations
- Fendi sees Roaring 20s at Milan Fashion Week in challenging times
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr part ways with coach Castro
- Scottish government backs Glasgow to stage troubled 2026 Commonwealth Games
- Storm Boris toll rises to 21 in central Europe
- Instagram, under pressure, tightens protection for teens
- Inflation slows again in Canada to 2%
- US, European stocks rise on eve of Fed rate decision
- EU bans Algerian spread toasted on social media
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs charged with racketeering, sex trafficking
- Trump returns to campaign trail after assassination scare
- Activist urges repatriation of Native Americans dead in Paris 'human zoo'
- US retail sales see slight rise, beating expectations
- US Fed begins two-day meeting set to end with rate cut
- Exploding Hezbollah pagers wound hundreds across Lebanon
- Runners-up Yokohama thrashed 7-3 in AFC Champions League goal fest
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs to plead not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking
- Jihadist group claims rare attack on Mali capital
- 'I am a rapist,' Frenchman tells trial over mass rape of wife
Ice-age footprints shed light on North America's early humans
Footprints laid down by Ice-Age hunter-gatherers and recently discovered in a US desert are shedding new light on North America's earliest human inhabitants.
Dozens of fossilized prints found in dried-up riverbeds in the western state of Utah reveal more details about how the continent's original occupants lived more than 12,000 years ago -- just as the frozen planet was starting to thaw.
The fossils could have remained unnoticed if not for a chance glance out of a moving car as researchers Daron Duke and Thomas Urban drove through Hill Air Force Base chatting about footprints.
"We were talking about 'what would they look like?'," Duke told AFP. "And he said: Kind of like that out the window.'"
What the two men had found turned out to be 88 distinct prints left by a mixture of adults and children.
"They vary between just looking like discolored patches on the ground and... little pop ups, little pieces of dirt around them or on them. But they look like footprints," Duke said.
What came next was a painstaking few days of very careful digging -- sometimes lying on his belly -- to ensure that what they were looking at was as old as it appeared.
"What I found was bare feet of people... that had stepped in what looks to be shallow water where there was a mud sub layer," Duke explained.
"The minute they pulled their foot out, the sand infilled that and has preserved it perfectly."
Duke, of the Nevada-based Far Western Anthropological Research Group, had been in the area looking for evidence of prehistoric campfires built by the Shoshone, a people whose descendents still live in the western United States.
He had brought Urban over from Cornell University because of his expertise in uncovering evidence of ancient humans -- including the discovery of human tracks in New Mexico's White Sands National Park that are thought to be up to 23,000 years old.
- 'Awestruck' -
The new fossils add to a wealth of other finds from the area, including stone tools, evidence of tobacco use, bird bones and campfire remains, that are starting to provide a more complete record of the Shoshone and their continuous presence in the region beginning 13,000 years ago.
"These are the resident indigenous people of North America, this is where they lived, and this is where they still live today," Urban said.
For him personally, finding the footprints has been a professional high point.
"Once I... realized I was digging a human footprint, I was seeing toes, I was seeing the thing in immaculate condition... I was just kind of awestruck by it," he said.
"Nothing beats the sense of discovery and awe that maybe as an archaeologist, you are actually chasing your whole career."
And sharing the discovery with the distant descendents of the people who made the prints was immensely rewarding, Urban said.
"You realize the same thing is happening -- what the connection is to such a distant past and to something so human, I think it gets to everybody in one way or another eventually."
O.M.Souza--AMWN