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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...

Yang Zheyu, a 6-year-old kindergarten student in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is a celebrity. In his English and painting classes outside his kindergarten, strangers recognise him. When he walks through the residential quarter where he and his parents live, neighbors ask for his autograph. That's because the media have hailed him as the country's youngest discoverer of dinosaur footprints. Zheyu, who was born in December 2014, visited his maternal grandfather's home in Tongjiang county with his parents during the seven-day National Day holiday last year to see "strange footprints". His grandfather, Gou Taixiang, 56, a doctor, had told Zheyu that footprints...

After more than a decade of searching for evidence of the infamous British Bigfoot, an investigator claims to have found a print that was a terrifying 41cm from toe to heelAn investigator claims to have proof of the British Bigfoot. Lee Brickley found tracks and claw marks after a decade searching for the ape-like beast. The 33-year-old says the print was a terrifying 41cm from toe to heel – nearly twice the size of a man’s size eight. Lee knows people will think he is “mad” but he hopes to prove them wrong. He said: “When I show them the...

The earliest human footprint on record in the Americas wasn't found in Canada, the United States or even Mexico; it was found much farther south, in Chile, and it dates to an astonishing 15,600 years ago, a new study finds. The finding sheds light on when humans first reached the Americas, likely by traveling across the Bering Strait land bridge in the midst of the last ice age. This 10.2-inch-long (26 centimeters) print might even be evidence of pre-Clovis people in South America, the group that came before the Clovis, which are known for their distinctive spearheads, the researchers said.

(Parks Victoria released a photo on December 20, which shows a dinosaur footprint after it was damaged by vandals at Flat Rocks near Melbourne) Vandals used a hammer to smash a 115-million-year-old three-toed dinosaur footprint in a national park in Australia. Park rangers at the Bunurong Marine Park discovered the damage to the theropod footprint while taking a school group on a tour. The one-foot wide print was found in 2006 and deliberately left in place to allow visitors to see it in its natural state in one of the world’s few ice-age dinosaur sites. "It is so disappointing,”...

FULL TITLE: Controversial footprint discovery suggests human-like creatures may have roamed Crete nearly 6m years ago The human foot is distinctive. Our five toes lack claws, we normally present the sole of our foot flat to the ground, and our first and second toes are longer than the smaller ones. In comparison to our fellow primates, our big toes are in line with the long axis of the foot – they don't stick out to one side. In fact, some would argue that one of the defining characteristics of being part of the human clade is the shape of our...

group of scientists say they have discovered “Australia’s Jurassic Park” along the rocky shores of Kimberly, a remote region in Western Australia. As Jonathan Amos reports for the BBC, palaeontologists found a diverse collection of dinosaur footprints in the area—among them the largest dinosaur footprint known to science. The research team, which was comprised of palaeontologists from the University of Queensland and James Cook University, recorded twenty-one types of fossil footprints stamped into the sandstones of the Dampier Peninsula. They recently published their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. “There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at...

Scientists have unearthed in Mongolia's Gobi Desert one of the biggest dinosaur footprints ever recorded, measuring over a metre in length. The enormous print, which measures 106cm (42 inches) in length and 77cm in width and dates back more than 70 million years, offers a fresh clue about the giant creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago, scientists from the Okayama University of Science said.

Nowhere gets you closer to the Romans on Hadrian's Wall than the fort and settlement of Vindolanda, the extraordinary hoard of personal artefacts gives you a unique insight into the lives of people living here 2000 years ago. The latest addition to the collection of artefacts from the current excavation has certainly made an impression on everyone. Someone 2000 years ago quite literally put their foot in it and as a result a volunteer digging at the site has unearthed a tile with a clear imprint of a human foot that accidentally, or perhaps mischievously stood on the freshly made...

Bronze Age footprints, both from animals and from humans, were initially identified as work was conducted on the Diramazione Nocera-Cava dei Tirreni methane pipeline in the municipalities of Nocera Superiore, Nocera Inferiore, Roccapiemonte, and Castel San Giorgio. This prompted a two-year-long archaeological investigation.SoGEarch, an Italian archaeological society, oversaw the excavations through the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Salerno and Avellino.The footprints found near the Casarzano stream in Salerno, roughly 20 miles away from Pompeii, contained rock fragments from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Experts believe the people who left behind these prints were trying...

researchers have uncovered a series of massive dinosaur trackways dating back to the Middle Jurassic Period, approximately 166 million years ago. Dubbed a 'dinosaur highway,' the site features footprints from both herbivorous dinosaurs, likely Cetiosaurus and the fearsome carnivore Megalosaurus. The discovery was made at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England, and includes over 200 footprints spread across five extensive trackways, the longest of which stretches more than 150 meters. ... a skeleton is a record of the animal once it's died. Footprints are quite different in that they are snapshots into the life of an animal .... The overlapping...

A group of scientists, led by paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an Emeritus Professor President of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at the Southern Methodist University Campus in Dallas, Texas, have made a significant discovery. The scientists found matching dinosaur footprints on two separate continents, South America and Africa. In Brazil and Cameroon, over 260 footprints were uncovered. These footprints show where dinosaurs once roamed freely on the two continents millions of years ago before South America and Africa drifted apart. Jacobs explained that the footprints were not only similar in age but also in their geological...

A new analysis of ancient footprints in South Africa suggests that the humans who made these tracks might have been wearing hard-soled sandals.Ichnological evidence from three palaeosurfaces on the Cape Coast, in conjunction with neoichnological study, suggests that humans may indeed have worn footwear while traversing dune surfaces during the Middle Stone Age.The study is published in the journal Ichnos.While researchers are reluctant to shoehorn in any firm conclusions regarding the use of footwear in the distant past, the prints' unusual characteristics may provide the oldest evidence yet that people used shoes to protect their feet from sharp rocks in...

(R. Nial Bradshaw) Archaeologists recently stumbled upon a set of mysterious 'ghost footprints' in the salt flats of a Utah desert. These unusual ancient tracks get their eerie name not because they are from an ethereal realm, but due to their earthly composition: They become visible only after it rains and the footprints fill with moisture and become darker in color, before disappearing again after they dry out in the sun. Researchers accidentally discovered the unusual impressions in early July as they drove to another nearby archaeological site at Hill Air Force Base in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert. The...

Human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast show people were living there 13,000 years ago at the end of the most recent Ice Age, scientists have found. The footprints, which are the only ones ever found from this time around Canada's Pacific coast, belong to at least three different individuals. The incredible prints could have captured the moment these individuals disembarked from their boat for the first time before moving to drier areas. Digital photographic studies have revealed that the footprints probably belonged to two adults and a child, all barefoot.

New evidence of human population living on the west coast of Canada at the end of last ice age. Human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, according to a new study. The finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age.

A team of Italian researchers have possibly uncovered the oldest ever fossilized footprint left behind by modern man's ancestor, Homo Erectus. The prints are thought to date back some 800,000 years and were unearthed in the desert of south eastern Eritrea... Alfredo Coppa... from Rome's Sapienza university... and his Italian colleagues were working with researchers from Eritrea's National Museum when they unearthed the 26 m2 slab of stone containing the footprints. Today, the area lies in the middle of an arid desert, but 800,000 years ago the environment was very different. The fossilized footprints, which are almost indistinguishable to those...

...The prints number in the dozens and depict the movements of several adults and at least one child, as they tended to their neatly arranged crops and the small irrigation ditches that watered them. Discovered in November by archaeologists investigating a parcel of land near Interstate 10, the prints are likely the oldest human tracks yet found in the American Southwest... What's more, the footprints provide a glimpse into the daily life of people who practiced some of the earliest agriculture in the region, in intimate detail... The barefoot tracks are distinct enough that the movements of specific individuals can...

Dinosaur Footprints in Dallas by Brian Thomas, M.S., and Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * Spring rains flooded the Dallas area this year, including Lake Grapevine which is about 10 miles west of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) campus. Record water levels submerged entire lakeside parks and adjacent roads. As the water slowly receded, it revealed a reshaped shoreline—and dinosaur tracks. What kinds of creatures made these marks?

Evidence of what could be the oldest footprints in North America has been discovered below the shoreline of a remote British Columbia island. Fossilized human footprints believed to be of a man, woman and child and estimated to be more than 13,000 years old were discovered at Calvert Island, which is located on B.C.'s central coast and is accessible only by boat or float plane. Remnants of an ancient campfire were found nearby. Archeologist Duncan McLaren said radiocarbon dating indicates the charcoal materials are 13,200 years old, and he is preparing to duplicate those tests to confirm the results... Fossilized...