World’s OLDEST animal footprints discovered – revealing strange burrowing creature that lived 550million years ago
A mysterious creature with paired legs is responsible for treading through China, leaving the earliest footprints known to man
SCIENTISTS have uncovered the earliest footprints left by animals on Earth, dating back more than half a billion years.
The astonishing discovery reveals how creatures with paired legs were seemingly scuttling around over 100million years earlier than we previously thought.
The fossilised footprints were discovered by a team of scientists studying trackways and burrows in China.
We don't know exactly what species the footprints belong to, but scientists described the creature as a bilaterian animal, like an arthropod.
This means it has paired appendages, and may have been a burrowing creature.
Experts previously believed that this type of creature appeared during the "Cambrian Explosion" around 541 to 510million years ago.
But these new fossils date back to the Ediacaran Period, which lasted between 635 and 541million years ago.
They were discovered by researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Virginia Tech in the United States.
The scientists were examining a geological area known as the Denying Formation in the Yangtze Gorges area of South China.
A timeline of life on Earth
The history of the planet in years...
- 4.6billion years ago – the origin of Earth
- 3.8billion years ago – first life appears on Earth
- 2.1billion years ago – lifeforms made up of multiple cells evolve
- 1.5billion years ago – eukaryotes, which are cells that contain a nucleus inside of their membranes, emerge
- 550million years ago – first arthropods evolve
- 530million years ago – first fish appear
- 470million years ago – first land plants appear
- 380million years ago – forests emerge on Earth
- 370million years ago – first amphibians emerge from the water onto land
- 320million years ago – earliest reptiles evolve
- 230million years ago – dinosaurs evolve
- 200million years ago – mammals appear
- 150million years ago – earliest birds evolve
- 130million years ago – first flowering plants
- 100million years ago – earliest bees
- 55million years ago – hares and rabbits appear
- 30million years ago – first cats evolve
- 20million years ago – great apes evolve
- 7million years ago –first human ancestors appear
- 2million years ago – Homo erectus appears
- 300,000 years ago – Homo sapiens evolves
- 50,000 years ago – Eurasia and Oceania colonised
- 40,000 years ago – Neandethal extinction
"The trackways are somewhat irregular, consisting of two rows of imprints that are arranged in series or repeated groups," explained notes from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"The characteristics of the trackways indicate that they were produced by bilaterian animals with paired appendages that raised the animal body above the water-sediment interface.
"The trackways appear to be connected to burrows, suggesting that the animals may have periodically dug into sediments and microbial mats, perhaps to mine oxygen and food."
Sadly, the scientists weren't able to locate the body fossils of the animals that made these traces.
It's possible that the bodies were never actually preserved, so it may be that we'll never know what they actually looked like.
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