Abstract Human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than one and a half kilometres of an out- and-return journey and form the longest Late Pleistocene-age double human trackway in the world. An adolescent or small adult female made two trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a young child in at least one direction. Despite giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth transecting them between the outbound and return journeys, the human tracks show no changes indicative of predator/prey awareness. In contrast, the giant ground sloth tracks show behaviour consistent with human predator awareness, while mammoth tracks show no such apparent concern. The human footprints are morphologically variable and exhibit left-right asymmetry, which might be due to child carrying. We explore this morphological variability using methods based on the analysis of objective track outlines, which add to the analytical toolkit available for use at other human footprint sites. The sheer number of tracks and their remarkable morphological variability have implications for the reliability of inferences made using much smaller samples as are more common at typical footprint sites. One conclusion is that the number of footprints required to make reliable biometric inferences is greater than often assumed.

中文翻译：

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在泥泞中行走：来自白沙国家公园（新墨西哥州）的非凡更新世人类轨道

摘要 白沙国家公园的人类足迹记录了超过一公里半的往返旅程，形成了世界上最长的晚更新世双人足迹。一名青少年或成年女性进行了两次相隔至少几个小时的旅行，至少在一个方向上带着一个年幼的孩子。尽管巨型地懒和哥伦比亚猛犸象在出境和回程之间横切它们，但人类的足迹没有显示出捕食者/猎物意识的变化。相比之下，巨型地面懒惰的足迹表现出与人类捕食者意识一致的行为，而猛犸象的足迹则没有这种明显的担忧。人类的脚印在形态上是可变的，并且表现出左右不对称，这可能是由于携带孩子。我们使用基于客观轨迹轮廓分析的方法探索这种形态变异性，这些方法增加了可用于其他人类足迹地点的分析工具包。轨迹的绝对数量及其显着的形态变异性对使用小得多的样本做出的推断的可靠性有影响，这在典型的足迹地点更为常见。一个结论是，进行可靠的生物识别推断所需的足迹数量比通常假设的要多。