The first vertebrates to walk the Earth emerged from the sea almost 20 million years earlier than previously thought, say scientists who have discovered footprints from an 8-foot-long (2.4-meter-long) prehistoric creature.
Dozens of the 395-million-year-old fossil footprints were recently discovered on a former marine tidal flat or lagoon in southeastern Poland.
About 1.5 million years ago, human ancestors walked upright with a spring in their steps just as modern humans do today, suggests an analysis of ancient footprints found in northern Kenya.
The prints are the oldest known to show modern foot anatomy.
The discovery also helps round out the picture of a cooling and drying episode in Africa that compelled tree-dwelling human ancestors to venture into the open landscape for food, said John Harris, a paleoanthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
If you think scorpions are scary, try this on for size: a six-legged water scorpion the size of a human. Newly discovered tracks reveal that about 330 million years ago, just such a creature lumbered along the riverbanks in present-day Scotland.
The fossilized track is the largest of its kind ever found and shows these now extinct creatures could walk on land, according to Martin Whyte, a geologist at the University of Sheffield in England.
Aspiring storytellers take note: Your backyard is full of tales about the daily trials and tribulations of the natural world.
The stories are embedded in the tracks made by the yard’s inhabitants, and winter’s snows make this season the best time to learn to read them, naturalists say.
Footprints impressed on the Earth millions of years ago are energizing the field of dinosaur paleontology which until recently has mostly relied on piles of old bones dug up from ancient sediments.
“Of course, there is much to be learned from a corpse, even one that has been dead for millions of years, but there is a limit after which you leave science and are left with speculation,” said Rich McCrea, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta in Canada.
Dinosaur tracks made on the edge of a coastal plain 163 million years ago in middle England are providing a team of researchers with new insights into the evolution and behavior of sauropods.
Sauropods are the group of plant-eating dinosaurs distinguished by their long necks and tails. They include some of the largest creatures ever to walk on Earth.