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These footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk are over 500,000 years old.

These footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk are over 500,000 years old.

 
 

In a previous episode of the #membercast I spoke to Nick Ashton about the footprints he helped discover in Norfolk. Footprints that are over 500,000 years old left by a close ancestor to homesapians… well, a close ancestor and their kids.

The previous episode 004 - Footprints in time went into this in detail but I wanted to speak to Nick again and really get to grips with how we know how old something is and what is the science behind it.

In this I learned it isn’t just the object itself, but the ground it was found in, and the hundreds of fragments of supporting evidence that give us an understanding of what happened in the past. Each piece of evidence is in balance with the others, and together we can build a picture of what must have happened hundred of thousands of years ago.

 
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