Many dubbed the giant who made the footprints the Tularosa Sasquatch. The footprints are found on the shore of old Lake Otero. The now-dry lake existed at the end of the last ice age and covered hundreds of square miles of the Tularosa Basin. White Sands National Monument sits on the south end of the old lake and Northrup Strip, where the space shuttle landed in 1982, sits on the north end of the lakebed. What is unusual about these tracks is that they are in the form of pedestals about four to six inches tall.
Scientists says the animals walked along the shore of the lake and make regular tracks in the mud.
Because of their weight they compressed the mud under the track and made that material harder than the surrounding mud. Now, as the shoreline erodes because of wind and rain, the surrounding material wears away faster than the footprints. This leaves the footprints standing several inches above the rest of the shore. Pete Eidenbach with Human Systems Research, the missile range's archaeological contractor, says they have examined gullies along the shore and found subsurface footprints. In other words, the footprints were covered over with mud and silt and will probably come to the surface sometime in the future when the shoreline erodes more.