POLAND: 397 million year old tetrapod footprints discovered

Record ID: 806729

  • Title: POLAND: 397 million year old tetrapod footprints discovered
  • Date: 8th January 2010
  • Summary: WARSAW, POLAND (JANUARY 7, 2009) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR POLISH GEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE FINDERS OF FOSSIL PIOTR SZREK AND GRZEGORZ NIEDZWIECKI VARIOUS OF FOSSIL (SOUNDBITE) (Polish) DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLISH GEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE GRZEGORZ PIENKOWSKI, SAYING: "Today we have an opportunity to look at the prints coming from the distant past, from over almost four hundred million
  • Embargoed: 23rd January 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Poland
  • Country: Poland
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVA6DW5O2E7V05UQSJ1O7AEKRWIX
  • Story Text: The latest discovery by Polish scientists may lead to a radical change in current theories on the evolution of prehistoric animals.
    397 million-year-old tetrapod footprints were discovered in the Swietokrzyskie mountains in southern Poland by Piotr Szrek and Grzegorz Niedzwiecki. At the time the footprints were made, the region was a seashore. Previous fossil findings of four-limbed vertebrates have been in river deltas and lakes.
    "The prints that were left are those of a predecessor to all the land dwelling vertebrates that are known to us, not excluding our selves or those that can no longer be admired by us such as dinosaurs," deputy director of the Polish Geological Institute Grzegorz Pienkowski, told a news conference.
    "This discovery contradicts all accepted theories concerning one of the most important events in evolution; In brief that it started much earlier, in a different way and that it occurred in a different location from where we once thought." Pienkowski added.
    The footprints are 18 million years older than the earliest known examples of fossilised bones of tetrapods - vertebrate animals with four feet, and suggest that the creatures that left them were 2.5 metres long.
    According to existing fossil evidence it was thought that tetrapods diverged from the group of large fish called the elpistostegalians around 387 million years ago.
    "I felt some anxiety and I had the impression that Per Erik Ahlberg (scientist who was consulted on the finding) will treat it as a joke and it will be funny for him as it contradicted all contemporary theories concerning the knowledge of evolution of early four legged animals in the Devonian era," said Grzegorz Niedzwiecki, one of the scientists who discovered the fossil.
    Niedzwiedzki added that the seashore was a tempting source of new food and eventually tempted them to walk on land.
    The footprints show that creatures leaving them tramped through mud in what was at the time an intertidal marine lagoon.
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