Queen Mary helps find Europe’s oldest footprints

The earliest human footprints outside of Africa have been uncovered, on the English coast, by a team of scientists led by Queen Mary University of London, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. Up to five people left the series of footprints in mud on the bank of an ancient river estuary over 800,000 years ago at Happisburgh in northeast Norfolk. Dr Simon Lewis from Queen Mary's School of Geography has been helping to piece together the geological puzzle surrounding the discovery - made in May 2013 - which is evidence of the first known humans in northern Europe. Dr Lewis's research into the geology of the site has provided vital information on the sediments in which the prints were found. "My role is to work out the sequence of deposits at the site and how they were laid down. This means I can provide a geological context for the archaeological evidence of human occupation at the site." The importance of the Happisburgh footprints is highlighted by the rarity of footprints surviving elsewhere. Only those at Laetoli in Tanzania at about 3.5 million years and at Ileret and Koobi Fora in Kenya at about 1.5 million years are older.