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The Footprint
In 1884, Earl Flint, a geologist representing the Peabody Museum and Harvard University discovered in a rock quarry near Managua, Nicaragua on the shores of Lake Gilva, a layer containing fossilised human tracks, 16 to 24 feet below the surface. Flint described the tracks in these words, written in 1884, "The footprints are from one-half to three inches in depth and none exceeded eighteen inches. Some of the impressions are nearly closed, the soft surface falling back into the impression and a crevice about two inches in width is all one sees. My first glance at some parallel to one less deep gave me an idea that the owner of the latter was using a stave to assist him in walking. In some the substance flowed outward leaving a ridge around it. This is seen in one secured for the museum, the stride is variable owing to the size of the person and the changing nature of the surface passed over. The longest one uncovered was seventeen inches, length of foot ten inches, and width four inches, feet arched, steps in a right line, measured from centre of heel to centre of great toe over three steps. The people making them were going both ways in a direction consonant to that of the present lake shore east and west."