r/BeAmazed • u/Dynastyisog • Dec 30 '24

History In 2006, researchers uncovered 20,000-year-old fossilized human footprints in Australia, indicating that the hunter who created them was running at roughly 37 km/h (23 mph)—the pace of a modern Olympic sprinter—while barefoot and traversing sandy terrain.

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u/fornoodles Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 30 '24

How did they manage to calculate his running speed just by looking at his fossilized footprint?

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u/Supergoblinkunman Dec 30 '24

Footprints plural.

I'm not an expert, but they measure things like distance between prints, depth of the different parts of the print, etc. And that tells you things like speed, leg length, etc. 

Basically, the speed and way you move effects how you leave footprints, and this can be measured by looking at the really minor details of the footprints and where those footprints are in relation to every else in the area.

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u/Red_Icnivad Dec 30 '24

I wonder what the margin of error is on that? Seems like slightly different body shapes could have drastically different effects on things like stride length.

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u/ProfetF9 Dec 30 '24

what if he was 2.5m tall? he was just having a nice walk instead of running

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u/LucysFiesole Dec 30 '24

This is exactly what I was thinking. A toddler and an adult, for example, have very different stride lengths. That does not mean that the adult was running, just that the stride length is longer because they're taller.

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u/Jaikarr Dec 30 '24

2.5m tall with tiny liddle feetsies

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u/JonesInDenial Dec 30 '24

He might have been 2.5m tall but his legs were only 50cm long. Quick AF but looked hilarious doing it.

They dont build em like that anymore. /s