Researchers have reported that the water-dwelling ancestors of modern-day mammals, reptiles and birds emerged onto land millions of years earlier than previously thought.
Their studies have found that four-footed animal with a spine, or tetrapods, were treading the earth 397 million years ago, well before scientists thought they existed.
Scientists had only traced tetrapods back to to 385 million years ago.
Experts had thought they had split from their close relatives, fish, a few million years earlier and then gone on to conquer land.
But the new fossil footprints have pushed the timing back by several million years.
Paleontologists have deduced from the new find that, from the shape of the toe prints and the nature of the sediment in which the fossils were found, that the animals spent time walking around on land.
The work appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
Source : http://www.austinnews.net/story/585622
Their studies have found that four-footed animal with a spine, or tetrapods, were treading the earth 397 million years ago, well before scientists thought they existed.
Scientists had only traced tetrapods back to to 385 million years ago.
Experts had thought they had split from their close relatives, fish, a few million years earlier and then gone on to conquer land.
But the new fossil footprints have pushed the timing back by several million years.
Paleontologists have deduced from the new find that, from the shape of the toe prints and the nature of the sediment in which the fossils were found, that the animals spent time walking around on land.
The work appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
Source : http://www.austinnews.net/story/585622
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