300,000-year-old footprints reveal extinct humans went on a lakeside family outing among giant elephants and rhinos

The discovery of three footprints, including those of two children, suggests that Homo heidelbergensis foraged and bathed on the same lake shores as long-extinct elephants and rhinos. (Image credit: University of Tübingen)

In a forest clearing of birch and pine trees in what is today central Europe, herds of long-extinct beasts once gathered to drink on the shores of an ancient lake. Now, researchers have confirmed that early human relatives and their children foraged and bathed among them.

Three rare, 300,000-year-old footprints from a Lower Paleolithic (around 3 million to 300,000 years ago) fossil site in northwestern Germany reveal that Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species of human that existed from about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, co-existed with prehistoric elephants and rhinos, whose footprints were also found at the site. While a 2018 study in the journal Scientific Reports documented a similar neighborly relationship between early humans and prehistoric beasts in Ethiopia from 700,000 years ago, this is the first footprint evidence of H. heidelbergensis from Germany and only the fourth record of the species' footprints worldwide.