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A newly discovered fossil of a four-legged whale in Peru sheds new light on the evolution of whales and their journey across the oceans. ***************************************************************** A fascinating new discovery has been made off the coast of Peru, where paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a previously unknown four-legged whale species. This remarkable find, which was made about 42.6 million years ago during the middle Eocene, is shedding new light on the evolutionary transition of whales from land-dwelling mammals to the aquatic giants we recognize today. As reported in Current Biology, the whale species, named Peregocetus pacificus, was found in the...

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...

More than 1.5 million years ago, two different species of ancient human crossed paths on a lakeshore, perhaps locking eyes with each other. These early forerunners of Homo sapiens wandered in a landscape teeming with wildlife, including giant maribou storks that stood 2 meters (6.5 feet) tall...The first part of the find occurred in July 2021 during an excavation at Koobi Fora, on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya, where the skeletal remains of several ancient human relatives have been found. That excavation revealed one hominin footprint, alongside several other tracks made by large birds. The team decided...

In 2022, researchers stumbled upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa while examining boulders at a nearby pocket beach. A team of archaeologists have unveiled the discovery of the oldest human footprints ever recorded in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean. The footprints, dating back an astonishing 90,000 years, were found on a beach in Larache, Morocco, by a multinational team led by Moncef Essedrati, a research professor and laboratory director at the French University of Southern Brittany. "Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach," Essedrati told...

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...

...an international research team led by scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment presents the earliest human footprints known from Germany. The tracks were discovered in the roughly 300,000-year-old Schöningen Paleolithic site complex in Lower Saxony. The footprints, presumably from Homo heidelbergensis, are surrounded by several animal tracks—collectively, they present a picture of the ecosystem at that time.In an open birch and pine forest with an understory of grasses sits a lake, a few kilometers long and several hundred meters wide. On its muddy shores, herds of elephants, rhinoceroses, and even-toed ungulates...

Thousands of years ago, a swath of land along what is now the western coast of England served as a superhighway for humans and animals alike. Today, the ebb and flow of each passing tide reveals more of the ancient footprints that these long-gone travelers stamped into the once mud-caked route.Reminders of their travels can be seen along a nearly 2-mile-long (3 kilometers) stretch of coastline near Formby, England. The footprint beds show how, as glaciers melted and sea levels rose after the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago, humans and animals were forced inland, thus forming a...

(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?