Before 1922 (or on 25 January 1927, according to some versions of the story), an amateur geologist and Fortean, John T Raid or Reid (or, according to the other version, Alfred E Knapp), found a fossil in the Triassic limestone of Fisher Canyon, Pershing County, Nevada, as reported by W H Ballou in the New York Sunday American of 8 October 1922. The stratum is conventionally dated to 225 million years ago (although some give a date of 5 million years or state that it was from coal layers 15 million years old). However, the accounts state that it was found lying among a pile of loose rocks, fossil side uppermost, on the side of a low hill. It showed a shoe print, complete with a broken off heel (Knapp is quoted as saying that “it is a layer from the heel of a shoe which had been pulled up from the balance of the heel by suction, the rock being in a plastic state at the time”).
Microscopic photography carried out later at the Rockefeller Institute (or Foundation, according to the variant account) confirmed that it was indeed a heel and that the fossil seemed to show the presence of two rows of crewel, 8.5 mm (??) apart, with the twists in the thread clearly visible. Minute crystals of mercury sulphide confirmed the fossil’s antiquity. According to Samuel Hubbard of the Museum of Archaeology in Oakland, California, “Today’s people on the earth are not yet able to make this kind of shoe. Facing this kind of evidence indicates that at the time of suspected uncivilized arthropods, millions of years ago, people with high intelligence appear to have existed…”. The version according to which the fossil was discovered by Raid quotes him as saying that “the minutest detail of thread twist and warp, proving that the shoe sole... is strictly the handiwork of man”. It is also claimed that the right side appeared more worn than the left, indicating that it was a shoe worn on the right foot.
Even supporters of the fossil admit that most geologists who have examined the rock have concluded that it is a natural formation, even though it closely resembles a shoe print. However, the problems are even greater. Why are there two separate accounts of the same discovery, made at different dates and by different people? Why is there no agreement about the date and character of the rock in which it was found? What about the expert opinion of Samuel Hubbard? He is quoted elsewhere on this site as giving an opinion on an alleged Tyrannosaurus pictogram from Arizona. Although on that occasion, he worked as Curator of Archaeology for the Museum of Natural History in Oakland, California, this time, he works for the Museum of Archaeology. He is also quoted in 1923 as an authority for the genuineness of the Lady of the Woods in Crater National Park, saying that it might be the cast of a woman engulfed by a flow of mud that had poured down the side of Mount Mazama. The fact that it had been carved in 1917 by Dr Earl Russell Bush (and publicly acknowledged as such in 1921) does not inspire confidence in Hubbard’s investigative abilities. Moreover, another quote from him about this discovery rather gives the game away: “There are whole races of primitive men on earth today, utterly incapable of sewing that moccasin. What becomes of the Darwinian theory in the face of this evidence that there were intelligent men on earth millions of years before apes were supposed to have evolved?” This makes it clear that Hubbard was not a dispassionate investigator, but one on the side of the creationists at a time when the debate in the USA was at its fiercest.
Given the inconsistencies in the story, it is difficult to take seriously any of the claims being made for the ‘fossil’; indeed, there is little evidence that it is indeed a ‘fossil’ rather than a product of erosion. It is also troubling that there are two incompatible versions of the story, both complete with circumstantial details; one or the other has to be false, if not both (Thomas, 1971, p.24). .
In 1897, the Los Angeles Herald revealed that laborers had discovered a fossil shoe print in solid rock. The imprint was that of a shoe with a high narrow heel and a broad flat sole. It was so clear, in the fine grained shale in which it was found, that it looked as though the owner had unwittingly put his right foot into soft mud but a day or two ago. Sandal or moccasin prints have also been seen in the gypsum of the White Sands in New Mexico. Ellis Wright in 1932 found tracks of human form but 22 inches long. Some later tracks were accompanied by marks suggestive of the use of some sort of support like a walking stick by one of the antediluvian beings. The White Sands were laid down as an ancient inland sea gradually dried up around the time of the demise of the dinosaurs.
A highly detailed footprint, thought to be that of a young boy, was found fossilized in clay stone on the east bank of the Connecticut River, just south of Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1852. Also preserved in the clay were the tracks of birds, four footed animals, and snails. Even the impressions of raindrops were preserved and were not "totally obliterated by the foot of the boy. All the striae and lines on the sole of the foot appear distinctly..." Alongside the boys footprint were those of a crow, and the pattern of skin of the birds foot could be clearly seen. The bed of stone bearing these imprints line under some 20 feet of alluvial sand until it was exposed by the streams (The American Journal of Science and Arts, 2:19:391-96, May1855).
A large stone bearing the perfect imprint of a human foot 14 1/2 inches long was shown to members of the Ohio State Academy of science in 1896. The stone slab had been dug from the ground in a hill four miles north of Parkersburg, West Virginia some 20 years earlier (The American Anthropologist, February 1896, p.66).
At the summit of Big Hill in the Cumberland Mountains in Jackson County, Kentucky, is a layer of carboniferous sandstone. In the 1880's it was crossed by a wagon trail that in time broke up the surface of the rock. When the resulting debris was cleared away, a series of tracks was discovered in this carboniferous layer about 300 million years old. There were imprints of a bear, something resembling a large horse, and two "tracks of a human being, good sized, toes well spread, and very distinctly marked." The prints were examined by Professor J.F.Brown of Berea College, Kentucky (The American Antiquarian, 7:39, January 1885).
In 1938 Dr. Wilbur Burroughs, head of the geology department of Berea College, Kentucky announced that he had discovered 10 humanoid footprints in carboniferous sandstone on a farm belonging to Mr. O. Finnell in the hills in the southern part of Rockcastle County. The prints were 9 1/2 inches long and 6 inches wide. The length between footprints was 18 inches. No marks of forefeet or a tail were found. Photomicrographs and infrared photography revealed that there were no signs of carving or artificial markings in or around the prints. A microscopic count of sand grains indicated that the material within the prints had been impacted, and created as the result of a force pressing down on the firmament while it was soft. These facts show that the prints were made by the natural result of
pressure from the human foot, and in no way could have been duplicated by carving. The rock in which the prints were discovered was estimated to be 250 million years old. In recent years, the prints have been destroyed by "vandals." (Brad Steiger, Mysteries of Time and Space, pp.6-7).
A carnival of horses, bears, turkeys, and six toed humans left their tracks in what is now solid stone near the headwaters of the Tennessee River, a few miles south of Braystow, North Carolina. According to Josiah Priest, a 19th century writer on antiquities, the bizarre humanoid tracks included one of a giant - 16 inches long, 13 inches across at the toes, and 5 inches wide at the ball of the heel (Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, p.150).
A pair of human footprints once graced a slab of limestone on the west back of the Mississippi River at St. Louis. In 1816 or 1817 the slab was quarried from its position and removed by a Mr. George Rappe to the village of Harmony (now New Harmony), Indiana. The prints were 10 1/2 inches long and 4 inches wide at the toes, 6 1/4 inches apart at the heels, and 13 1/2 inches spanning between the toes, reported Henry R. Schoolcraft, "the toes being very much spread, and the foot
flattened in a manner that happens to those who have been habituated to go a great length of time without shoes. Notwithstanding this circumstance, the prints are strikingly natural, exhibiting every muscular impression, and the swell of the heels and the toes, with a precision and faithfulness to nature, which I have not been able to copy, with perfect exactness, in the present drawing.... Every appearance will warrant the conclusion that these impressions were made at a time when the rock was soft enough to receive them by pressure, and that the marks and features of the feet are natural and genuine." In the geologic scheme of things, this limestone hardened about 270 million years ago. Both the rock and the prints in it were said to show the same evidence of wear and aging (The American Journal of Science and Arts, 1:5:223-312, 1822).
On the north slope of a boulder strewn hill near the mouth of the Little Cheyenne River, South Dakota, lies the flat, dazzling white rock of magnesian limestone, which scientists say was laid down and hardened over 100 million years ago. On it are three prints of moccasined feet. In size they seem to be those of a woman or adolescent, and to judge the length of the stride (4 1/2 and 5 1/2 feet) the person who made them was running. In one of the prints, the impression made by the heel is deeper than that made by the ball of the foot, which again lends credence to the theory that whoever made the tracks was running. The depth of the tracks varies from 1/2 an inch to 1 inch. All three clearly show the instep and faint toe impressions, and all show the same amount of weathering as the unmarked surface of the surrounding stone. According to an interview which was obtained with Mr. Le Beau, who had lived in the area for over 26 years, local Indians knew nothing of the origin of the footsteps, but viewed the stone as a "medicine rock." (William R. Corliss, Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts, p.649).
Giant tracks, seemingly made by a human being, were found by a government trapper in the Alkali
Flats area of Great White Sands, New Mexico, in 1931. A year later a party of four, including O. Fred
Arthur, supervisor of Lincoln National Forest, set out to investigate the tracks, with the government
trapper Ellis Wright as their guide. They found 13 imprints crossing a relic desert basin in the eastern
most foothills of the San Andreas Mountains. Despite the great size of the tracks, the investigators
were convinced they were human, "for the prints were perfect and even the insteps were plainly
marked." Oval shaped, the prints are 16 to 22 inches long and 8 to 12 inches wide, with a distance
between strides of about 5 feet and a separation in width of 2 feet.
The site was revisited in 1972, 1974, and 1981, and more tracks were found. When they were first studied, it had been noted that the imprints were 2 1/2 inches deep. But in 1974 (42 years later) they were between 1 and 1 1/2 inches above the ground! The compacting of the soft earth by the heavy tread of the creature had preserved the prints while the surrounding soil had been eroded by wind and the occasional rainfall. By 1981 the tracks stood well above the surface by several
inches. There is no doubt that the tracks were made by living creatures. One suggestion is that they were made in the 1850's by US Army camels, a more accepted view is that they are 10,000 years old, and were made by an extinct animal such as a Mammoth or native camel. But the spacing of the footprints suggests a two legged creature. The mysterious tracks are now protected by archaeologists (U.S. Army Report, 1981).
What may well be the oldest fossil footprint ever discovered was found in 1968 by William J. Meister, an amateur fossil collector. If the print is what it appears to be, the impression of a sandaled shoe crushing a trilobite, it would have had to have been made 300 - 600 million years ago and would be sufficient to either overturn all conventionally accepted ideas of human and geological evolution or to prove that a shoe wearing biped from another world had once visited this planet. Meister made his potentially disturbing find during rock and fossil hunting trip to Antelope Spring, 43 miles west of Delta, Utah. He was accompanied by his wife and two daughters, and by Mr. and Mrs. Francis Shape and their two daughters. The party had already discovered several fossil trilobites when Meister split open a rock with his hammer and made the outrageous find. The rock fell open "like a book" revealing " on one side the footprint of a human with trilobites right in the footprint itself. The other half of the slab of rock showed an almost perfect mold of the footprint and fossils. Amazingly, the human was wearing a sandal." Trilobites were small marine invertebrates, the relatives of todays shrimp and crabs that flourished for over 320 million years before becoming extinct 280 million years ago. Humans are currently thought to have begun emerging between 1 and 2 million years ago and to have been wearing well shaped footwear for only the last several thousand. The sandal that seems to have crushed a living trilobite was 10 3/4 inches long and 3 1/2 inches wide; the heel is indented slightly more than the sole, as a human footprint would be. Meister took the rock to Melvin Cook, a professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, who advised him to show the specimen to university geologists. When Meister was unable to find a geologist who was willing to look at the fossil, he went to the local newspaper, The Desert News. Before long, the find received national publicity. In a subsequent news conference the curator of the Museum of Earth Science at the University of Utah,James Madsen said; "There were no men 600 million years ago. Neither were their monkeys or ground sloths to make pseudo human tracks. What man thing could have possibly have been walking around on this planet before vertebrates even evolved?" Madsen then went on to say that the fossil must have been formed through natural processes, though what kind he was unable to suggest. Dr. Jesse Jennings, of the universities anthropology department , guessed (rather boldly, considering the absence of any supporting visual evidence) that the print might have been made by one large trilobite coming to rest on three smaller ones. On July 20th, 1968, the Antelope Spring site was examined by Dr. Clifford Burdick, a consulting geologist from Tucson, Arizona, who soon found the impression of a child's foot in a bed of shale. "The impression" he said" was about 6 inches long, with the toes spreading, as if the child had never yet worn shoes, which compress the toes. There does not appear to be much of an arch, and the big toe is not prominent." The print was shown to two geologists and one paleontologist. One of the geologist agreed that it appeared to be that of a human being, but he paleontologist said that no biological agent had been involved. Dr. Burdick stuck to his guns: "The rock chanced to fracture along the front of the toes before the fossil footprint was found. On cross section the fabric of the rock stands out in fine laminations, or bedding planes. Where the toes pressed into the soft material, the laminations were bowed downward from the horizontal, indicating a weight that had been pressed into the mud." In August 1968 Mr. Dean Bitter, an educator in the Salt Lake City public school system, claimed to have found two more footprints in the Antelope Springs area. According to Dr. Cook, no trilobites were injured in these footfalls, but a small trilobite was found near the prints in the same rock, indicating that the small sea creature and the sandaled traveler might have been contemporaries (Bible Science Newsletter, August-September 1969, Royal Research Society Quarterly, December 1968; CRSQ, 1968, 5:3, p.97).
In 1882 huge footprints, strongly resembling those of a human wearing shoes, were found in a layer of sandstone in the yard of the state prison near Carson City, Nevada, during digging operations. The prints were between 18 and 20 inches long and approximately 8 inches wide. The stride was about 3 feet and the distance between the left and right tracks, the straddle, was about 19 inches. Numerous other tracks resembling those of deer, horses, elephants and wolves were found in the same layer of sandstone. Since the size of the prints and the age of the rock at the layer they were discovered (2 to 3 million years old) argued against a human or even a hominid origin, the prints were ascribed to a more acceptable origin, the tracks of a giant ground sloth. It is thought that these animals could stand upright, but only by using their tails for additional support. However, no tail track was found at this site. It was also suggested that perhaps the animal was walking on four feet, and that its rear legs were landing exactly in the tracks left by its front feet, thereby creating the impression of a biped. But this fails to account for the fact that the tracks show no toe marks (The American Journal of Science 3:26:139-40, July-December 1883).The footprint of a human being, apparently fleeing toward the Gediz River from a volcanic eruption, was discovered in volcanic ash during the construction of a dam near Demirkopru, Turkey, in 1970. The age of the ash was determined to be 250,000 years old by the Turkish Mineral Research and Exploration Institute in Ankara, and the print was pronounced human by the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Sweden. If so, whoever made the print was an antecedent of Neanderthal man (Nature, 254:553, April 17th, 1975).
In the American Journal of Science a number of references to footprints in rock strata are discussed and reproduced, such as the following: Human impressions
were reported in various locations in South America, but details are lacking...Human footprints in a limestone slab in a paved area between a house and garden in
New Harmony, Indiana...A rock outcrop extending for three miles in front of St. Louis, Missouri, one to 200 feet wide, was observed during low water stages. The
large number of human footprints there were noted already by early French explorers. The prints are in crinoidal limestone. The prints are described as of a man
standing erect with toes spread apart. They appeared strikingly natural with every muscular impression, and the swell of heel and toes. The print described was about
10 1/2 inches long. The observer contrasted these prints with obviously carved footprints he had observed elsewhere...Other prints were reported in a quarry at
Herculaneum, Missouri, and on rocks near Kingston, New York (CRSQ , 1970, 7:4, p.205).
The State Geologist of Kentucky performed extensive tests on footprints found near Berea. The prints were discovered when the overburden from a sandstone formation was removed in logging operations about 1930. One series of prints found included some arranged in a normal walking stride. Microscopic studies showed that the grain counts were greater in the soles than in the adjacent sandstone, showing greater compression within the print areas. Distinct left and right foot impressions were found, each with five toes and with a distinct arch. The prints could not have been carved since some of the tracks werestill partly covered by higher sandstone strata. Other prints have been reported in nearby areas, but further information is lacking (CRSQ , 1970, 7:4, p.207).
Close by a lake near Managua, Nicaragua are perhaps the most famous footprints in the Americas. They lie under eleven strata of solid rock from 16-24 feet under the surface. Heated debate about the age of the prints has gone on for almost a century. Initially they were dated about 200,000 years old, but since the
feet were perfectly modern the age was reduced to older than 50,000 years. The only geologist to visit the scene at the initial discovery also found traces of domesticated dogs and horses with the prints - an impossible situation to resolve.
Polished stone artifacts and projectile points were also discovered. The prints are now dated at about 3000 B.C. on the basis of C14 tests, but this forces a considerable number of catastrophic events in a very short time period. Since various fossilized animal bones and mastodon remains have been found in strata above the human prints, the conclusion then is forced that the mastodon lived into very recent times. Near the city of San Raphael other human and animal tracks were found, including a sandal print which is now in the museum at Harvard (Victoria Institute , 1886, 22:148-152; Archaeology , 26 [April 1973], 146-147).
