Cliff collapses in Grand Canyon revealing 313 million-year-old footprints, park says

[Backseat Driver]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cliff-collapses-grand-canyon-revealing-170013155.html

Maddie Capron
Miami Herald•August 20, 2020

A geology professor hiking in the Grand Canyon made a “surprising discovery” — the oldest recorded tracks of their kind.

After a cliff collapsed in Grand Canyon National Park, a boulder with fossilized tracks was revealed, park officials said in a Thursday news release. The fossil footprints are about 313 million years old, according to researchers.

“These are by far the oldest vertebrate tracks in Grand Canyon, which is known for its abundant fossil tracks” Stephen Rowland, a paleontologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said in the news release. “More significantly, they are among the oldest tracks on Earth of shelled-egg-laying animals, such as reptiles, and the earliest evidence of vertebrate animals walking in sand dunes.”

The tracks were in plain view for many hikers, but weren’t discovered until Allan Krill, a Norwegian geology professor, was hiking with students and saw a boulder containing “conspicuous fossil footprints,” park officials said....snip

[tblue37]

1. K&R and thanks. nt

[soothsayer]

2. Wait until drumpf opens it for drilling

We’ll find all kinds of things!

Well not so much find as destroy.

[MontanaMama]

3. How cool is this?

Thanks for posting. What a wonderful world.

[SCantiGOP]

4. Boring story for some

“Oldest footprints possible discovered, over 6,000 years old.”

[niyad]

5. KNR

[CaptYossarian]

6. Pretty amazing for a 6000-year old planet.

Right, evil-gelicals?

[Delmette2.0]

7. That is awesome.

Thanks for sharing.

[jeffreyi]

8. How Extremely Swell.

Thanks for posting.