When Did Animals Leave Their First Footprint on Earth?

SciTechDaily ^ | June 12, 2018 | Chen Xiaozheng, Chinese Academy of Sciences

[SunkenCiv]

Bilaterian animals such as arthropods and annelids have paired appendages and are among the most diverse animals today and in the geological past. They are often assumed to have appeared and radiated suddenly during the "Cambrian Explosion" about 541-510 million years ago, although it has long been suspected that their evolutionary ancestry was rooted in the Ediacaran Period. Until the current discovery, however, no fossil record of animal appendages had been found in the Ediacaran Period.

Researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Virginia Tech in the United States studied trackways and burrows discovered in the Ediacaran Shibantan Member of the Dengying Formation (551-541 million years ago) in the Yangtze Gorges area of South China. The trackways are somewhat irregular, consisting of two rows of imprints that are arranged in series or repeated groups.

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.

These trace fossils represent some of the earliest known evidence for animal appendages and extend the earliest trace fossil record of animals with appendages from the early Cambrian to the late Ediacaran Period. The body fossils of the animals that made these traces, however, have not yet been found. Maybe they were never preserved.

Reference: "Late Ediacaran trackways produced by bilaterian animals with paired appendages" by Zhe Chen, Xiang Chen, Chuanming Zhou, Xunlai Yuan and Shuhai Xiao, 6 June 2018, Science Advances.

Late Ediacaran trackways produced by bilaterian animals with paired appendages

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: cambrianexplosion; ediacaranperiod; footprint; footprints; godsgravesglyphs; paleontology

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the link.

[Magnum44]

[bankwalker]

Day 5 and 6 ...

[DannyTN]

[Mark17]

Day 5 and 6 ...

I was just going to say, they left their first footprint on the earth, the day God created them. 🙏

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[Larry Lucido]

Right after the floor got mopped.

[SkyDancer]

Probably around the 1930’s in the Bronx.

[bwest]

Your faith is admirable, but that’s not science.

[bwest]

No. My relatives were leaving footprints there in the 20s.

[SkyDancer]

Probably earlier than that.

[mass55th]

"Dinosaur Highway With 166-Million-Year-Old Footprints Found in Quarry [01/02/2025]"

They just covered this find in the first episode of Season 12 "Digging for Britain" with Dr. Alice Roberts. The track length is pretty extensive. Alice has toned down the pink hair.

[Vaduz]

And then a big rock .................

[bwest]

Before the beginning, there was this turtle.
And the turtle was alone.
And he looked around, and he saw his neighbor,
which was his mother.

IYKYK

[9YearLurker]

Because they stepped in mud?

[Sirius Lee]

“Animals without backbones hid from each other, or fell down. Clambasaurs and oysterettes appeared as appetizers”

[SunkenCiv]

When, not how or why.

[9YearLurker]

They did it when they stepped in mud.

[bwest]

I think we’re all Bozos on this thread.