This particular timescale is inaccessible through other types of evidence and provides several original insights. Footprints thus directly reflect the locomotor behavior and foot anatomy of individuals, as well as the composition and behavior of the groups that left them. Although footprints provide information complementary to skeletal remains and archaeological artifacts, helping to refine our understanding of human evolution, studying them is far from easy. First, footprints are relatively rare in the fossil record, despite a significant increase in the number of discoveries over the past decade, and they are difficult to assign to species defined on the basis of anatomical characteristics. Moreover, the morphology of these traces results not only from foot anatomy or the individual’s biomechanics, but also from the nature of the substrate (grain size, mineralogy, moisture) and the many taphonomic processes that may come into play.