Hominid footprints

Some marks indicate a broken toe

The Engaresero Footprint Site, located in the south of Lake Natron, 13 km from Africa Safari Lake Natron, reportedly houses one of the best-preserved sets of fossilized hominid footprints in the world. To date, however, there has been no detailed characterization and age determination of the footprint containing layers (the Footprint Tuff).

The more than 400 footprints are between 5,000 and 19,000 years old and came to the attention of scientists in 2008. They cover a deposited area slightly larger than a tennis court. Engaresero’s footprints are intriguing because of the abundance and diversity of the prints; some tracks appear to show people “jogging,” while another indicates a person with a strange, perhaps broken toe, and others point toward a dozen people, mostly women and children, who traveled together.