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The Antelope Springs (‘Meister’) ‘footprint’

The so-called ‘Meister footprint’

On 1 June 1968, William J Meister Sr, an amateur fossil hunter from Kearns (Utah, USA) arrived for a holiday in Antelope Springs, about 69 km (43 miles) northwest of Delta (Utah, USA). On their third day there, Meister and his family went out searching for trilobite fossils. One fossil stood out as being not just another trilobite. The fossil was formed in Middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale, dated to 505 to 590 million years ago. It contained the impression of what resembled the sole of a shoe, about 260 mm (10¼ inches) long, 89 mm (3½ inches) wide at its widest point tapering to 76 mm (3 inches) wide at the ‘heel’ (which was depressed 3 mm (1/8 inch) further than the rest of the imprint). Beneath the print were the fossils of two trilobites and Meister thought that this showed that the wearer of the ‘sandals’ had trodden on them, squashing them into the mud on which he (or she) had been walking.

On returning home, he showed the fossil to Melvin A Cook (1911-1989), president of a chemical company in West Jordan (Utah, USA), who urged him to go back to the site to search for more evidence. In July he returned with two geologists, Clarence Coombs (c 1910-2004) of Columbia Union College, Tacoma (Maryland, USA), and Maurice Carlisle, who had qualified at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Colorado, USA). They found slabs of mudstone that they concluded had once formed an ancient land surface.

A few weeks later, Clifford Burdick (1894-1992), a geologist and creationist from Tucson (Arizona, USA), discovered what appeared to be footprints of a human child nearby, when he accompanied Maurice Carlisle to the site around 20 July. This time the foot seemed naked. Although an (unnamed) palaeontologist dismissed the find as not of animal origin – meaning that it was not a print of any creature, human or otherwise – Burdick continued to believe in its human origin. In August, Dean Bitter, a teacher from Salt Lake City (Utah, USA), discovered two more sandal prints.

The trilobite fossil

There are the usual problems: whilst there are undoubted resemblances between the shape of the print and that of a shoe sole, part of the imprint is missing. Furthermore, if the imprint really is of a shoe worn by a (presumably air-breathing) human, we have to explain the presence of trilobites (a marine creature) in the same stratum. This ancient pedestrian must have been walking on the sea bed. Worse, there is no trace of pressure exerted by the supposed wearer of the shoe upon the trilobite (despite the alleged compaction of the sand grains) and the supposed heel is formed by a crack that runs across the whole slab, continuing beyond the ‘footprint’. Similar patterns have been found throughout the Wheeler formation, while concentric oval shapes of varying colour, sometimes with a stepped profile, are what were interpreted by Burdick and Bitter as in situ footprints or sandal prints. Moreover, it is telling that Meister and Bitter’s discoveries were announced in The Creation Research Society Quarterly by Melvin A Cook, while Burdick’s appeared in The Bible-Science Newsletter of August/September 1969: Clifford Burdick was not simply a geologist, but a well known creationist whose work aimed at demonstrating a young earth.

A detailed examination of the find can be found on the TalkOrigins website.

This page was last updated on 17 August 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser