4 sets of berea footprints

Human-Like Tracks in Stone are Riddle to Scientists

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“The prints were found in a sandstone formation known to belong to the Coal Age, about 12 miles southeast of Berea, KY, by Dr. Wilbur G. Burroughs, professor of geology at Berea College, and William Finnell.

“Recently Prof. Burroughs was visited in his laboratory by some Kentucky mountain men, who took him up into their hills and showed him another place where there were many of the footprints. This mountain site, indeed, seems to have been the ‘Old Kentucky Home’ of a whole family of mysterious animals, for Prof. Burroughs reports that the footprints ‘range in size from small ones about 4-1/2 inches long to tracks the size I have written you about,” which were nearly 10 inches in length.

These human-like prints were found in a sandstone formation known to belong to the Coal Age, about 12 miles southeast of Berea, KY
These human-like prints were found in a sandstone formation known to belong to the Coal Age, about 12 miles southeast of Berea, KY

“The footprints are exceedingly curious things. They are the right size to be human- 9 or ten inches in length – and they are almost the right shape. Practically everyone who sees them thinks at first they were made by human feet and it is almost impossible to persuade people that they were not. If the big toes were only a little bigger, and if the little toes didn’t stick out nearly at a right angle to the axis of the foot, the tracks could easily pass for those of a man. But the boldest estimate of human presence on earth is only a million years – and these tracks are 250 times that old!

“The highest known forms of life in the Coal Age were amphibians. Animals related to frogs and salamanders. If this was an amphibian it must have been a giant of its kind. A further puzzling fact is the absence of any tracks of front feet. The tracks, apparently all of the hind feet of biped animals, are turned in all kinds of random directions. At Bearea, two of them are side by side, as though one of the creatures had stood still for a moment.

“So the riddle stands. A quarter of a billion years ago, this Whats-it That Walked Like a Man left footprints on widely scattered sands that time hardened into rock. Then he vanished. And now scientists are scratching their heads.”

Science News Letter
Oct 29, 1938

Postscript: Here's a 2016 photo of these same tracks supplied to us by David B. Willis. "My new profile photo is another view of this amazing track.  Unlike the Paluxy tracks, there is no one who can deny that the track is clear and human-like.  In another nearby KY location an identical human track was identified, also in Pennsylvanian sandstone and I have a wax cast of the print...which was made by a professor of Geology at Berea College."
Postscript: Here’s a 2016 photo of these same tracks supplied to us by David B. Willis. “My new profile photo is another view of this amazing track.  Unlike the Paluxy tracks, there is no one who can deny that the track is clear and human-like.  In another nearby KY location an identical human track was identified, also in Pennsylvanian sandstone and I have a wax cast of the print…which was made by a professor of Geology at Berea College.”

More riddles for paleontologists:

America’s first Christmas card?(Opens in a new browser tab)

Hopewell Country and the Junction Earthworks(Opens in a new browser tab)

The Poor Man’s Stonehenge(Opens in a new browser tab)

5 comments

  1. David, I learned of these tracks while doing some studying this summer. I am very interested in seeing all evidence pertaining to them. I’ve read one description which naysayed them, but upon seeing the images I must say that description gave me a very inaccurate “impression” of what they actually look like. I had wondered if these prints had been lost through being ignored over time, and I am excited that someone is tracking their existence still!

  2. Isn’t there a possibility that the actual age of the footprints was wrong? I’m pretty sure the age of the Stone or terrain is very easy to date with new technology but it’s impossible to date only the remaining of something that was there and now it’s not (like footprints).

  3. I found a human foot print in a big sandstone rock shelf in Oklahoma the print is about a inch deep. I wear a size 9 cowboy boot and I took my boot and sock off and placed my foot in the print and my big toe stuck out over the print. It was about a size 7 to 8. Pointed north east. But was not only fossil in the stone. There was these weird holes near by.

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