Sydney, May 15: The discovery of fossilised reptile-like trackways in northern Victoria, Australia, has pushed the origin of reptiles back by up to 40 million years, according to new research published in Nature.
Led by Flinders University’s Professor John Long, the international team identified clawed footprints in the Mansfield district dating from the Carboniferous period, approximately 350 million years ago.
These tracks are now considered the world’s oldest evidence of amniotes—animals with characteristics of modern reptiles—walking on land.
The fossil find challenges the longstanding timeline of tetrapod evolution, which previously placed the emergence of crown-group amniotes at around 318 million years ago and tetrapods at approximately 334 million years.
The newly discovered trackways suggest that key evolutionary developments occurred much earlier than previously recorded.
The slab containing the trackways was found by local fossil hunters Craig Eury and John Eason, who later coauthored the study.
Initially thought to be amphibian in origin, one trackway with a hooked claw confirmed the presence of reptilian features.
Detailed analysis of the tracks was carried out by researchers from Flinders University and Uppsala University in Sweden, using 3D scanning and heatmaps to study movement patterns and behaviour.
The fossil beds of the Mansfield area, long known for ancient fish and shark remains, had never yielded evidence of land animals—until now.
This breakthrough recalibrates the evolutionary timeline and adds critical data to the study of how vertebrates transitioned from water to land.
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