100,000-year-old Neanderthal footprints show children playing in the sand - Livescience.com

The footprints "could indicate an area of passage of very young individuals, as if they were playing or loitering on the shore of the nearby waterlogged area," Mayoral told Live Science in an email.

The biologists first saw fossilized animal tracks; some of the footprints were made long ago by large animals, like deer or wild boars, Mayoral said.

The researchers think the tracks could be the oldest Neanderthal footprints ever found in Europe.

At the time the footprints were made, the now-exposed surface appears to have been along the shore of a watering hole slightly inland from the coast, which was farther south back then than it is today, Mayoral said.

"Probably the water would not have been fresh but somewhat brackish, since we have found evidence of sea salt crystals (halite) on the surface where the footprints are found," he wrote in the email.

The team photographed the site extensively with an aerial drone and digitally scanned each of the fossilized human footprints in three dimensions.

The sizes and distribution of the footprints suggest they were made by a group of 36 Neanderthal individuals who were probably related, including 11 children and 25 adults — five females, 14 males and six individuals of undetermined sex.

They are among several footprints grouped chaotically in some areas, possibly because the Neanderthal children were playing in the sand on the shore of the watering hole, Mayoral said

Analysis of the tracks shows that most of the footprints are located on the edge of the flooded area, but the individuals who made the prints did not move entirely into the water, the researchers wrote

The footprints were "unquestionable proof of these hominids' existence in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and, specifically, in this area of the Andalusian coast," Mayoral said