The Smidgin

Investigating the Intersection of Science and Religion

Dates Make Everything Clearer

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I never returned to my stated confusion regarding the new tetrapod fossil footprints. The original BBC article was particularly unclear regarding the dates. The following is from one of many articles which explain this:

Tiktaalik lived around 375 million years ago, although even older elpistostegids, dating back to 385 million years, have been found.

But trackways found at a disused quarry at Zachelmie in the Holy Cross Mountains of southeastern Poland have thrown the timeline and the elpistostegids’ role into question.

In a paper released by the British weekly journal Nature, a team led by tetrapod sleuth Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, Sweden, report the finding of a dozen distinctive “hand” and “foot” prints from a creature that lived around 395 million years ago.

via Fish out of water: When did animals move to land?

Written by Jim

16 January 2010 at 00:11

Posted in Biology

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