The Meister Print (also known as the Meister Footprint) refers to two

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the At ...

s 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 An out-of-place artifact (OOPArt or oopart) is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in an unusual context, which challenges conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Such artifac ...

, 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 The Wheeler Shale (named by Charles Walcott) is a Cambrian ( 507 Ma) fossil locality world-famous for prolific agnostid and ''Elrathia kingii'' trilobite remains (even though many areas are barren of fossils) and represents a Konzent ...

near Antelope Springs, Utah.Regal, Brian (2009). ''Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia''. Greenwood. p. 22. "The "Meister Print" An Alleged Human Sandal Print from Utah"
TalkOrigins. Retrieved 4 May 2019. 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 Melvin Alonzo Cook (October 10, 1911 – October 12, 2000) was an American chemist, most known from his work in explosives, including the development of shaped charges and slurry explosives. Cook was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of La ...

as evidence against evolution in an article he wrote in 1970. Cook was not a paleontologist and his conclusion was criticized by experts. 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.The Antelope Springs ‘footprint’
Bad Archaeology. Retrieved 4 May 2019. According to

Brian Regal Brian Regal is an American historian of science, skeptic and writer. He is an associate professor of the history of science at Kean University in New Jersey. Regal is the author of an encyclopedia of pseudoscience, as well as ''Searching for Sas ...

"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."

References

Creationism Pseudoarchaeology 1968 archaeological discoveries {{trilobite-stub

See also

References