300,000-year-old ‘oldest human footprints' discovered in Germany

Experts have discovered the earliest human footprints in Germany dating back 300,000 years

Eberhard Karls/ University of Tuebingen

The footprints are believed to be the oldest in the country and belonged to 'Homo heidelbergensis', an extinct subspecies of archaic humans that existed between roughly 600,000 and 200,000 years ago

Eberhard Karls/ University of Tuebingen

They were found in the roughly 300,000-year-old Schoeningen Palaeolithic site complex in Lower Saxony

Eberhard Karls/ University of Tuebingen

The scientists have attributed two of the three human tracks that were discovered to 'young individuals who used the lake and its resources in a small mixed-age group'

Bournemouth University

Scientists also found elephant tracks at Schöningen 'attributable to the extinct species Palaeoloxodon antiquus - an elephant with straight tusks that was the largest land animal at the time and whose adult bulls reached a body weight of up to 13 tonnes'

Eberhard Karls/ University of Tuebingen