The origin of life remains one of science’s most profound questions. While human evolution is often discussed from the first hominids, understanding our deep ancestry requires us to look far back into Earth’s history. A pivotal moment in our evolutionary past was the transition of vertebrates from water to land. Fossilized footprints of these early terrestrial animals provide tangible evidence of that shift, and recent discoveries may significantly reshape that narrative.
In 2021, a pair of amateur fossil hunters along Victoria’s Broken River uncovered a series of claw prints embedded in limestone. The finds were forwarded to researchers at Flinders University, Adelaide, who identified them as belonging to an amniote – a lineage that includes all reptiles, birds and mammals. The prints have been dated to between 358.9 and 354 million years ago, placing them in the late Devonian period.
This discovery is a shock to the scientific community because amniotes were previously thought to have evolved only 35–40 million years later, during the late Carboniferous. The Victoria claw prints are now the oldest known amniote fossil evidence, suggesting that the first true land‑dwelling vertebrates appeared far earlier than previously believed.
Claw tracks are a clear hallmark of terrestrial reptiles, distinguishing them from amphibians, which lacked such adaptations. The presence of claws in these 359 million‑year‑old footprints indicates that the earliest amniotes were already capable of walking on land. This challenges the long‑held view that the Devonian period was dominated exclusively by aquatic life and that the mass extinction events at its close halted the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates.
The Devonian ended with a series of mass extinctions that wiped out 70–80 % of marine species. The fact that amniotes survived these events and continued to thrive on land provides new insight into resilience and adaptation during one of Earth’s most turbulent eras.
These findings were published on 14 May 2024 in the journal Nature, highlighting the collaborative effort between citizen scientists and academic researchers to refine our understanding of Earth’s deep past.
