300,000-year-old footprints are some of the oldest in Europe and show how our ancient ancestors co-existed with rhinos and elephants on lake and river shores

• Three fossilized footprints belong to an extinct species of ancient humans dating back 300,00 years.
• The prints are among the oldest in Europe and are the oldest ever found in Germany.

More than a quarter of a million years ago, ancient humans wandered a shallow lake alongside prehistoric elephants and rhinos in what is now Lower Saxony, a region in northwest Germany.

Proof of their existence is from three fossilized footprints they left behind that are among the oldest ever discovered in Europe and the oldest recorded in Germany, a recent study found.

The fossilized prints were covered for millennia, until a mining company began clearing the area to access coal deposits.

Archeologists at the University of Tübingen worked with a team of experts in geology, paleontology, and paleobotany to give context to the footprints.

They were able to "obtain a reliable picture of the landscape of 300,000 years ago," said team member Flavio Altamura, a fellow at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen.

That picture involves a group of the now-extinct human species called Homo heidelbergensis, or Heidelberg people, as well as the first fossilized Rhio footprints ever discovered in Europe.

The Heidelberg people were similar to us

The Heidelberg people were thriving in what is now Europe long before Neanderthals or even Homo sapiens, said Jordi Serangeli, excavation supervisor at the dig site in Schöningen, Germany.

Despite being a different species, the people who left the prints were similar to us, he said.

"I like to put the emphasis on what we have in common, and not on what divides us from our ancestors," Serangeli said. "They had the same physical and cognitive abilities as we do."

That included the ability to craft weapons that were "exceptionally efficient" for both hunting and defending themselves, Serangeli said.

Two of the three prints discovered at Schöningen were smaller and likely made by children, the researchers said. This suggests that Heidelberg people coexisted in what the team described as mixed-aged groups since it's difficult to know if they were actually a family in the modern-day sense.

Regardless, the discovery is significant since most archeological evidence like buildings, weapons, and cooking is performed by adults. Whereas children generally don't leave much evidence behind for scholars to study, Altamura said.

Researchers found the first ancient rhino print in Europe

The human prints were surrounded by many more fossilized footprints from prehistoric animals. Researchers even identified one print from a prehistoric rhino.

The beast was likely either a specimen of the species Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis, which had previously been identified in Siberia, or Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, a wooly rhino that lived throughout Europe.

It's the first time a print of either of these rhino species has been identified in Europe.

Elephants at the lake may have weighed up to 13 tons

Prehistoric elephants weighing up to 13 tons also left prints in the lakebed. The species, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, was about twice the size of modern African elephants and may have been the largest land mammal to ever walk the Earth.

These elephants had long, straight tusks and were found throughout Europe and western Asia hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The company plans to fill the old mine in to make a new lake, but visitors to the area will still be able to learn about their prehistoric ancestors.

"A beautiful museum has been built very close to the site, where the finds are showcased," Altamura said.