Discovery of Happisburgh footprints

The Happisburgh footprints are a set of fossilised hominin footprints preserved in estuarine sediments on the beach at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast of England. They were revealed by the erosion of the shore and were recorded in a short period before the tide destroyed them. The prints, probably made by a group of adults and children, are about 850,000 years old or a little more, which makes them the oldest known human footprints outside Africa. The species that made them is uncertain, though it may have been Homo antecessor. The find showed that early humans lived in northern Europe much earlier than was thought.

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