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Fossilized footprints show humans made it to North America much earlier than first thought [cnn.com]:

Fossilized footprints show humans made it to North America much earlier than first thought

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The commonly held view is that people arrived in North Americafrom Asia via Beringia, a land bridge that once connected the two continents, at the end of the Ice Age around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago. But more recent -- and some contested -- discoveries [cnn.com] have suggested humans might have been in North America earlier.

Now, researchers studying fossilized human footprints in New Mexico say they have the first unequivocal evidence that humans were in North America at least 23,000 years ago.

"The peopling of the Americas is one of those things that has been for many years very contentious and a lot of archeologistshold views with almost religious zeal," said Matthew Bennett, a professor and specialist in ancient footprints at Bournemouth University and author of a study on the new findings that published in the journal Science on Thursday.

"One of the problems is that there is very few data points,"he added.

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