NOVA “Ice Age Footprints”

Premieres May 25 at 8 p.m.

Thousands of prehistoric footprints in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park capture moments when Ice Age humans crossed paths with enormous ground sloths and mammoths. What can this new evidence reveal about the peopling of the Americas?

These footprints include tracks from 13-foot-tall mammoths, huge ground sloths, packs of dire wolves, and camels. Alongside them, though, is something even rarer—footprints of humans that have been buried for thousands of years and are gradually being exposed by wind erosion. The film uses immersive 3-D graphics to bring viewers face to face with some of the magnificent creatures that roamed North America during the last Ice Age–animals that went extinct more than 10,000 years ago–while revealing an untold story of human history on the continent.