#White Sands National Park | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lockvogel · 11 months

Text

Have a great weekend, everyone 😊!

Sunset in White Sands National Park, New Mexico

#White Sands National Park #New Mexico #landscape photography #original photography #Sunset #vacation #2023 #vacation 2023 #mine #road trip #roadtrip #desert #southwest #gypsum sand #dunes #photographers on tumblr #nature

6K notes · View notes

vangoghcore · 1 month

Text

by courtneywilson

#desert #white sands #white sands national park #nature #naturecore #landscape #photography #pastel #curators on tumblr #up

689 notes · View notes

blueiskewl · 7 months

Text

New Mexico Footprints are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas

Fossil footprints date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, upending previous theory that humans reached continent later.

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are probably the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands national park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake – which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once conventional wisdom that humans did not reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant – it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper.

Ancient footprints of any kind can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time. While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges – including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil – scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.

“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.

#New Mexico Footprints are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas #fossil #fossil footprints #White Sands national park #ancient artifacts #geology #geologist #archeology #archeolgst #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #ancient man

656 notes · View notes

thomaswaynewolf · 1 month

Text

#white sands national park #should have stayed a monument #New Mexico #Sierra Blanca #adventure #travel #my photo #desert #southwest #mountains #photography #aesthetic #landscape #scenery

132 notes · View notes

desert-love · 9 months

Text

#white sands national park #desert #nm #New Mexico #white gypsum sands #sunset

276 notes · View notes

williammarksommer · 1 year

Photo

In the Dunes

New Mexico

All The Time In The World

Hasselblad 500c/m

Kodak Ektar 100iso

417 notes · View notes

agelessphotography · 5 days

Text

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, Garry Winogrand, 1964

#garry winogrand #photography #vintage photography #vintage #new mexico #white sands national park #american #color photography #1960s #1964

41 notes · View notes

adventurealldays · 1 year

Text

#nature #hiking #landscape #new mexico #desert #sunset #white sands national park #white sands #pastel

259 notes · View notes

staudnhuckn · 1 year

Photo

White Sands after sunset

White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA

Tampachoa (Mansos), Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), and Mescalero Apache land

#original photography #landscape photography #photographers on tumblr #nature photography #desert #winter #new mexico #white sands national park

291 notes · View notes

a-dinosaur-a-day · 1 year

Text

Yesterday, while my cockatiels were figuring out the mechanism that unlocks their cage door, I managed to bring a cousin of Secernosaurus to a certain freaky kind of desert…