New Mexico

Footprints discovered in New Mexico rewrite American history

Published

2 years ago

May 20, 2024

Press Room

Footprints discovered in New Mexico rewrite American history

Archaeologists have made a staggering discovery about American history and it’s all thanks to some footprints.

The human tracks, unearthed in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, are the oldest ever to be found on the continent.

Scientists previously estimated their age as between 11,500 and 13,000 years, but new analysis has found out that the most ancient of them is, in fact, 23,000 years old.

This means that humans lived in North America at least 10,000 years earlier than experts had thought. And, indeed, experts say, it’s possible that they arrived earlier still: towards the end of the last ice age, more than 32,000 years ago.

“The site in New Mexico has rewritten history books,” Sally Reynolds, principal academic in paleoecology at Bournemouth University, said in a statement.

“These footprints provide a valuable window into the lives our ancestors lived and how much they were like us,” she added, explaining that they revealed “wonderful examples of human activity” and the way that humans “interacted with one another, with the landscape, and with the animal life there”.

The footprints are the earliest known evidence of humans in North America(NPS, USGS and Bournemouth University)

Indeed, it’s not just the age of these prints that makes them so remarkable, it’s the fact that they offer an unprecedented snapshot of life at the time.

From children jumping and splashing in puddles to a group of hunters stalking a giant sloth, the 23,000-year-old tracks pull back the curtain on our Pleistocene past.

They were made by people walking on damp ground at the edge of a now-dry lake and whilst some are visible to the naked eye today, others can only be identified using ground-penetrating radar.

Matthew Bennett, also of Bournemouth University and lead author of two scientific papers about the footprints told Smithsonian Magazine that he knew of older human tracks in Africa and older human tracks in Africa and other parts of the world, but none, he insisted, “tell such a vivid, relatable story”.

His first paper, published in the journal Science in 2021, detailed how the footprints captured a perilous journey undertaken by what appears to be a small woman or adolescent girl, carrying a child on her hip, walking fast across the muddy lakeshore.

“There were hungry predators around, including dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats,” Bennett told the Smithsonian.

“We can see where she slipped in the mud at certain points […] We can also see the child’s footprints where she set it down, presumably because she was tired and needed a rest.”

Based on the size of the footprints, the child seemed to be less than three years old and didn’t accompany their older female companion on the return journey.

This begs the question as to what happened to the child. Did the woman drop them off in a camp? And why were they walking among dangerous animals on the slippery lakeshore?

“There’s no way of knowing,” Bennett admitted. “But if you’ve ever rushed to get somewhere important while carrying a tired toddler, you’ve experienced a very similar emotion”– even if you weren’t looking over your shoulder for sabre-toothed cats.

The prints were found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, which was once home to a large lake(NPS)

“The footprints left at White Sands give a picture of what was taking place, teenagers interacting with younger children and adults,” Bennett said in a separate statement.

“We can think of our ancestors as quite functional, hunting, and surviving, but what we see here is also activity of play, and of different ages coming together. A true insight into these early people.”

The Bournemouth University scientist also stressed that although the footprints provide exciting glimpses into what life was like in North America 23,000 years ago, he and his team now want to find out how humans got there in the first place.

“We need lots more sites to make sense of where they came from and by what route,” Bennett told the Smithsonian.

“The lasting legacy of White Sands is to point the way to a new archive of evidence.”

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New Mexico

New Mexico deserves speedier game commission appointments

Published

7 hours ago

January 9, 2026

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New Mexico deserves speedier game commission appointments

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New Mexico

What bills have been filed for New Mexico’s 2026 legislative session?

Published

19 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

What bills have been filed for New Mexico’s 2026 legislative session?

The governor sets the agenda for the session, including for the budget, so here is what they are looking at so far.

SANTA FE, N.M. — As the regular session of the New Mexico Legislature is set to begin Jan. 20, lawmakers have already filed dozens of bills.

Bills include prohibiting book bans at public libraries and protections against AI, specifically the distribution of sensitive and “Deepfake” images

Juvenile justice reform is, again, a hot topic. House Bill 25 would allow access to someone’s juvenile records during a background check if they’re trying to buy a gun.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sets the agenda and puts forth the proposed budget lawmakers will address during the session. The governor is calling for lawmakers to take up an $11.3 billion budget for the 2027 fiscal year, which is up 4.6% from current spending levels.

Where would that money go? More than $600 million would go to universal free child care. Meanwhile, more than $200 million would go to health care and to protect against federal funding cuts.

There is also $65 million for statewide affordable housing initiatives and $19 million for public safety.

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New Mexico

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Paul Gessing, Rio Grande Foundation
| Las Cruces Sun-News

After years of failure to land a “big fish” business for New Mexico’s economy (or effectively use the oil and gas revenues to grow the economy) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham with the help of her Economic Development Secretary Rob Black have lured no fewer than three large data centers to New Mexico. These data centers are being built to serve the booming world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and they will have profound impacts on New Mexico.

It is our view that having these data centers locate in New Mexico is better than having them locate elsewhere. While we have many differences of opinion with this governor, we are pleased to see her get serious about growing and diversifying New Mexico’s oil-dependent economy albeit quite late in her second term.

Sadly, the governor and legislature have chosen not to use broad based economic reforms like deregulation or tax cuts to improve New Mexico’s competitiveness. But, with the failure of her “preferred” economic development “wins” like Maxeon and Ebon solar both of which the governor announced a few years ago, but haven’t panned out, the focus on a more realistic strategy is welcome and long overdue.

Currently, three new data centers are slated to be built in New Mexico:

Oracle’s Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa with an investment of $165 billion.
Project Zenith slated to be built in Roswell amounts to a $11.7 billion investment.
New Era Energy & Digital, Inc. While the overall investment is unclear, the energy requirement is the largest of the three at 7 gigawatts (that’s seven times the power used by the City of San Francisco).

What is a data center? Basically, they are the real-world computing infrastructure that makes up the Internet. The rise of AI requires vast new computing power. It is critical that these facilities have uninterrupted electricity.

That electricity is going to be largely generated by traditional sources like natural gas and possibly nuclear. That contravenes New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act of 2019 which was adopted by this Gov. and many of the legislators still in office. Under the Act electrical power emissions are supposed to be eliminated in a few years.

With the amount of money being invested in these facilities and the simple fact that wind and solar and other “renewable” energy sources aren’t going to get the job done. In 2025 the Legislature passed and MLG signed HB 93 which allows for the creation of “microgrids” that won’t tax the grid and make our electricity more expensive, but the ETA will have to be amended or ignored to provide enough electricity for these data centers. There’s no other option.

New Mexicans have every right to wonder why powerful friends of the governor can set up their own natural gas microgrids while the rest of us face rising costs and decreased reliability from so-called “renewables.” Don’t get me wrong, having these data centers come to New Mexico is an economic boon.

But it comes tempered with massive subsidies including a 30-year property tax exemption and up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds. New Mexico is ideally suited as a destination for these data centers with its favorable climate and lack of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. We shouldn’t be giving away such massive subsidies.

Welcoming the data center boom to New Mexico better than rejecting them and pushing them to locate in other states. There is no way to avoid CO2 emissions whether they happen here or somewhere else. But, there are questions about both the electricity demand and subsidies that must be addressed as New Mexico’s data center boom begins.

What will the Legislature, radical environmental groups, and future governors of our state do to hinder (or help) bring these data centers to our State? That is an open question that depends heavily on upcoming statewide elections. It is important that New Mexicans understand and appreciate these complicated issues.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

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