NOVA: Ice Age Footprints

Stream now with KPBS+ / Watch Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV + 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18 at 8 p.m. on KPBS 2

Thousands of prehistoric footprints left by Ice Age humans and animals stretch for miles across the blinding white surfaces of New Mexico’s White Sands National Park. The phenomenal collection of prints preserves a unique series of snapshots of life and behavior, capturing moments when humans crossed paths with extinct Ice Age beasts, including enormous ground sloths and mammoths.

Frozen in time, these intimate traces of human and animal activity represent evidence unknowable from any other type of archeological find. Not only do the tracks reveal remarkable details about life in the Ice Age, but radiocarbon dating of the footprints provides important new evidence about the people of the Americas.

Related Article: First Americans arrived at least 16,000 years ago, and probably by boat

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Scan of human fossil footprints from the ice age at white sands.

Public Domain - WHSA / NPS

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Human fossil footprints from the ice age at white sands.

Public Domain - WHSA / NPS

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Human fossil footprints from the ice age at white sands

Courtesy of WGBH

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David Bustos from the NPS brushes out prints in the trench.

Public Domain - WHSA / NPS

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Harlan's ground sloth footprint from the ice age at white sands.

Public Domain - WHSA / NPS

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Joe Watkins shows off a replica Clovis point.

Bella Falk. Courtesy of WGBH

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Ed Jolie, Joe Watkins and Carol Ellick build an experimental sled to see what sort of device might have made the linear drag marks at white sands.

Bella Falk. Courtesy of WGBH

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Kim Charlie, Kirk Johnson and Joe Watkins at White Sands missile range.

Bella Falk. Courtesy of WGBH

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Kirk Johnson with a sloth track.

Bella Falk. Courtesy of WGBH

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White sands gypsum sand dunes. New Mexico's White Sands National Park

Bella Falk. Courtesy of WGBH

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Credits: A NOVA production by Windfall Films Ltd. (part of the Argonon Group) for GBH. Producer is Bella Falk. Directors are David Dugan and Bella Falk. Editor is Sabrina Burnard. Kirk Johnson is the Host and Sant Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Executive Producer for Windfall Films is David Dugan. Executive Producers for NOVA are Julia Cort and Chris Schmidt. NOVA is a production of GBH. Distributed internationally by PBS International.