But the ash has now been dated to 1.3 million years ago - more than a million years before modern humans evolved.

Relatives of our species living at this time were not capable of making the journey to the Americas, experts say.

One of the Nature paper's authors even suggests the supposed footprints could have been made by picks used to quarry the site.

Controversial date

Earlier this year, a British-Mexican team led by Dr Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool John Moores University announced that the site at Valsequillo Lake near Puebla in southern Mexico likely contained the oldest evidence of human occupation in the Americas.

The researchers used several methods to date minerals and fossils from above, below and on the footprint layer itself.

Radiocarbon dating was carried out on shells and animal bones in the sequences, and mammoth teeth were dated using a technique called electron spin resonance.

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