Little Feet – Calling all Children!

These ancient footprints, preserved in muddy flood deposits, are from Namibia and were made by children as young as three or four tending a small herd of sheep or goats. They contain a remarkable record of past life – a snap-shot in time. Children’s footprints are quite common in the fossil record occurring in the Pleistocene caves of Europe and at a number of the more famous footprint sites around the world. In 2014 Professor Bennett and his colleagues set out to collect modern data to help interpret these ancient tracks. As part of Bournemouth University’s Festival of Learning they ran the Foot Lab which aimed to collect tracks from children of all ages. This proved successful but in the quest for a larger sample size they are running further data collection exercises as part of the Footprints on the Beach event next weekend so if you have children why not bring them down to the beach and get them involved in a science project and learn more about how children’s footprints change as they grow up? There will be a range of opportunities to meet the scientist and to get involved in some fun activities as well.P1030878

Leave a Reply

Your details
  • (Your email address will not be published in your comment)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>