Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

East Gippsland                                                                                                                                                         

By about 360 million years ago amphibian vertebrates were beginning to venture out of the water. Along the Genoa River, East Gippsland, Australia, not far from where the earliest-known club moss fossils were found, a fossil mud bank from that ancient time was found that bears the tracks of the first-known 4-footed animal on land. Some footprints show a 5-toed print and some have a shallow groove between the footprints that was made by the body or tail as the creature moved about.

It is now the second oldest known. Even older tracks have been found in Poland dating to 395 million years ago on preserved marine mudflats. It was previously believed that the adaptations for breathing air and living on land occurred exclusively in freshwater habitats, the new discoveries of the tracks and an air gulping lungfish from a marine environment show that it could occur in marine environments.

See Earliest Tetrapods, Origin from Marine Environment

Links

  1. Trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland
  2. Oxygen plungs left ancient fish gasping for air
Sources & Further reading                                                                                                                                                                       
Author: M. H. Monroe
Email:  admin@austhrutime.com
Last Updated 07/09/2014
 
Home
Journey Back Through Time
Geology
Biology
     Fauna
     Flora
Climate
Hydrology
Environment
Experience Australia
Aboriginal Australia
National Parks
Photo Galleries
Site Map
                                                                                           Author: M.H.Monroe  Email: admin@austhrutime.com     Sources & Further reading