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An endangered window into
South America's ancient past has gained a new lease on life,
thanks to the pioneering efforts of an Argentinian scientist intent on preserving
prehistoric animal tracks etched into a remote stretch of coastline that
is under threat from rising sea levels, human destruction and developers.
Teresa Manera de Bianco, a palaeontologist and geologist who, with her
husband, found the fossilised tracks in 1986 when a winter storm partly blew
the sand off a three-kilometre rocky shelf, has raced against time to record
the tracks before rising sea levels put them permanently beyond reach. She
has also struggled to convince local residents that the tracks, laid down 12,000
years ago when the area was an inland pond teeming with birds and mammals,
are worth protecting from destruction.
For her endless curiosity about the animals that produced the tracks and
her dedicated quest to preserve them for study by scientists and local people
alike, Manera won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2004. |
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Teresa Manera has pioneered a new
method of making casts from silicon rubber.
© Courtesy of Teresa Manera |
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A researcher and teacher at the
National University of the South in nearby Bahía Blanca, Manera has long
lobbied to make the site at Pehuen Co a government-protected reserve. A law
protecting the site was finally approved by the provincial legislature in 2005,
but it still awaits implementation. "The reserve exists on paper, and now we're
fighting to implement the new law," says Manera, who is pressuring the
government to speed up the process.
When the law is implemented, the government will provide park guards
to protect the site. To date that task has fallen on Manera and her colleagues,
along with brigades of university students who have volunteered to act as
guards during the summer when the pressure on the site from visitors and
vehicles is greatest.
The footprints, produced by at least 22 species of animals, including
mastodons, camelids, flamingos and ducks, are especially vulnerable to pressure
from vehicles traversing the thin layer of sand that covers the rocky shelf.
Although years of public campaigning by Manera have lessened the impact
from fishing and visitors to the beach, in recent years more and more people –
unaware or unconcerned about the footprints – have been arriving from further
afield to fish. In March 2006, they damaged the biggest prints found to
date at Pehuen Co, the 90cm-long and 44cm-wide prints left by the four-metrehigh
Megatherium, a sloth-like mammal that weighed up to four tonnes. |
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While lamenting the damage to the
footprints, Manera acknowledges that progress has been made, in part because
the Rolex Award helped boost public respect for her work.
"If it weren't for the Rolex Award, there would be nothing left at Pehuen
Co," she says. "We wouldn't have done anything. This international recognition
came first, and from that came national recognition, which produced the concrete
actions we've taken to protect the site.
Thanks to Rolex, this attention convinced people in the local community, as well
as the official organisations. Without Rolex, we might have just had a small
investigation and made a few moulds with help from some science group." |
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Students
make casts which will be permanent records of the
footprints.
© Courtesy of Teresa Manera |
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Manera has used funding from the
Rolex Award to make casts of the animal prints, which are being stored and
displayed at a museum in Punta Alta. She even perfected an innovative and
economical method of making casts from silicon rubber, which provides
better-quality moulds than those made from latex or plaster.
Some of Manera's casts – made in the tidal zone during fleeting moments
when the seas fall unusually low – are already provoking debate among
researchers. For example, she found evidence of hair on the feet of Megatherium,
a find that, she believes, settles a lively debate among scientists about
whether the animals were hairless. |
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These casts document the passage
of a Megatherium across Pehuen Co some 12,000 years ago.
© Courtesy of Teresa Manera |
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Restricting access to the beach at Pehuen Co
has proved necessary to prevent damage to the footprints.
© Courtesy of Teresa Manera |
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The most remarkable recent discovery
at Pehuen Co was made by one of Manera's students, who found human footprints
in the rock in 2005. Manera and her colleagues are now looking for
other human prints at the site, with an eye towards understanding how they
relate to the animal prints. The human footprints at Pehuen Co are very close
in age to those from about 12,500 years ago discovered in Chile – the oldestknown
human prints in South America.
As she continues to uncover the past, Manera believes that a well-preserved
Pehuen Co will provide employment for local residents as guards and interpreters,
increasing popular support for the site's preservation. And she also
suggests the prints may have something to teach all of humanity about its future.
"As we analyse what we've discovered, we ask what happened to these big animals
not so long ago. If we can understand what happened to them, perhaps
we can prevent some changes that could affect our future. It's a question of the
survival of our species."
Paul Jeffrey |
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Dr. Teresa Manera
Rosales 456
8109 Punta Alta
Provincia de Buenos Aires
Argentina
Email: tmanera@infovia.com.ar
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