540m-yr-old bug tracks are oldest footprints

[Still Waters]

The oldest known footprints on Earth, left by an ancient creepy-crawly more than 500 million years ago, have been discovered in China.

The tracks were left by a primitive ancestor of modern-day insects or worms, according to scientists. Precisely what the creature looked like is a mystery, though: nothing this old with legs has been discovered to date.

Prof Shuhai Xiao, a geobiologist at Virginia Tech University and senior author of the research, said the finding brings scientists closer to understanding what creatures were the first to evolve pairs of legs.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/06/oldest-known-footprints-on-earth-discovered-left-by-ancient-bug

[Carlos Allende]

And basic primordial lifeform or no, that's pretty respectable Keep-on-Truckin gait.

[pallidin]

Nice find !!

[bison]

Amazing that something that old was moving about on legs. The fauna of the Ediacaran period is generally thought to either be fixed in place rather than mobile, or crawling like a worm. Perhaps some unexpectedly early ancestor of Hallucigenia, from the following Cambrian period, a worm-like creature which could move about on seven pairs of long legs. Whatever it was that made these tracks, it seems to signify that complex, mobile forms of life got a significantly earlier start than expected. The powers of life continue to amaze.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/24/8838169/hallucigenia-worm-fossil-nature-study-2015   

Edited June 8, 2018 by bison
added link address, corrected same

[paperdyer]

Great find!  I guess we can rule out Bigfoot.