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Fossilized Tracks in Australia Show That Reptiles Emerged 40 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Estimated, Changing the History of Evolution.
A discovery made in Australia may significantly alter the current understanding of the origin of reptiles on Earth. New evidence indicates that these animals appeared millions of years earlier than scientists had previously believed.
The revelation comes from fossilized tracks found in the Mansfield district, in northern Victoria, Australia.
The find was led by Professor John Long from Flinders University and his team of researchers. The tracks belong to an amniote with clawed feet, indicating that the animal was likely a reptile. The dating of the marks points to the Carboniferous period, approximately 350 million years ago.
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“After we identified this, we realized that this is the oldest evidence in the world of reptile-like animals walking on land,” Professor Long explained.
Thus, the origin of reptiles may have occurred 35 to 40 million years earlier than previously indicated in the Northern Hemisphere.
Evidence from Gondwana Anticipates Evolution
The data obtained suggest that these animals may have originated in the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, where Australia is located today. The research was published in the journal Nature and generated significant attention in the scientific community.
The tracks, preserved in a rock slab, show a small, squat animal. According to Professor Long, the creature would visually resemble a Goanna, a type of modern lizard. The implications of the discovery are considered profound for understanding the evolution of tetrapods.
“All lineages of stem tetrapods and stem amniotes must have originated during the Devonian period,” Long stated.
He added that the evolution of tetrapods occurred much more rapidly than was previously thought and that the fossil record of the Devonian is far less complete than scientists had previously believed.
Change in Known Fossil Record
Until now, fossil records of crown group amniotes, which include mammals, birds, and reptiles, dated from the late Carboniferous, about 318 million years ago.
Meanwhile, the oldest body fossils of crown group tetrapods were about 334 million years old, and the oldest tracks were around 353 million years old.
The new data obtained from the Australian tracks contradict this widely accepted timeline.
“We now present new data from tracks in Australia that falsify this timeline,” explained Professor Long. The research included collaboration from experts in Australia and other countries, including a significant paper published in the journal Nature.
Decades of Study and Dedication
John Long’s involvement with the Mansfield region is not recent. He conducted his doctoral thesis on fossils found in the area 45 years ago. Only recently, after organizing field trips with students from Flinders University, did the work take on a new dimension.
During these expeditions, local residents like Craig Eury and John Eason, who are also co-authors of the scientific paper, discovered a slab covered in tracks.
Initially, the marks were mistaken for tracks of primitive amphibians. However, one of them presented a curved claw coming out of the toes, a characteristic of a reptile, an amniote.
“It was amazing how clear the trails were on the rock slab. We were immediately excited, and we felt we were on the brink of something significant, even without knowing the true scale of the discovery,” Long recounted.
Technology Helped Confirm the Discovery
The paleontology team at Flinders University included Dr. Alice Clement, who digitized the fossilized tracks and created detailed digital models for analysis.
She collaborated closely with Professor Per Erik Ahlberg from Uppsala University in Sweden.
“We studied rocks and fossils from the Carboniferous and Devonian eras, with a special focus on the transition from fish to tetrapods,” Dr. Clement stated.
According to her, the goal is to understand how the bodies and lifestyles of these animals changed as they left the water and began to live on land.
Dr. Aaron Camens, another co-author of the study, produced heat maps that helped identify details of the tracks more clearly. “A skeleton can tell us very little about what an animal was capable of doing, but a footprint records its behavior and shows how that animal was moving,” Camens explained.
Location Known for Ancient Fossils
Since 1980, Professor Long has been studying ancient fish fossils from the Mansfield area, which belongs to the Carboniferous period that began about 359 million years ago.
The area had previously revealed important fossils, such as ancient fish and sharks. However, there has always been a search for evidence of terrestrial animals.
For years, paleontologists tried to locate these tracks but to no avail. The slab with the marks that was finally found was taken to the laboratory and rigorously analyzed. “This new fossilized trail comes from the early Carboniferous, and it was important to determine its age accurately,” Long said.
To achieve this, the team compared the species of fish present in these rocks with other species found in well-dated locations around the world. The comparison allowed narrowing the fossil’s age to a margin of 10 million years.
Dr. Jillian Garvey from La Trobe University also contributed to the research and highlighted the impact of the discovery. “This discovery rewrites this part of evolutionary history. It indicates that there is much more that happened in Australia and Gondwana that we still need to uncover,” she stated.
The research involved collaboration with the Taungurung Land and Water Council, which has collaborated in studies of the Mansfield basin since the early 2000s.
The new evidence not only expands our knowledge of the origin of reptiles but also reinforces Australia and ancient Gondwana’s role in the evolutionary history of terrestrial vertebrates.
Reference: “Earliest Amniote Tracks Recalibrate the Timeline of Tetrapod Evolution” by John A. Long, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, Jillian Garvey, Alice M. Clement, Aaron B. Camens, Craig A. Eury, John Eason, and Per E. Ahlberg, May 14, 2025, Nature .
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08884-5
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