The Meister Print (also known as the Meister Footprint) refers to two trilobites in slate that appeared to be crushed in a human shoe print. The print was cited by creationists and other pseudoscience advocates as an out-of-place artifact, but was debunked by palaeontologists as the result of a natural geologic process known as spall formation.
In 1968, William Meister was searching for trilobite fossils in 500-million-year-old strata known as the Cambrian Wheeler Formation near Antelope Springs, Utah.[1][2] He discovered what looked like a human shoe print with a trilobite under its heel after breaking open a slab. The supposed footprint was used by Melvin A. Cook as evidence against evolution in an article he wrote in 1970.[2] Cook was not a paleontologist and his conclusion was criticized by experts.[2][3] Upon investigation the print showed none of the criteria by which genuine prints can be recognized, and the shape could best be explained by natural geological processes.[2][4][5]
According to Brian Regal "several studies showed the print was, in reality, an example of a common geologic occurrence known as spalling, in which slabs of rock break away from each other in distinctive patterns. This particular case of spalling had created a simulacrum vaguely suggestive of a shoe print."[1]
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