October 30, 2007 | David F. Coppedge

Amphibian Imprints Found

Full-body imprints of amphibians claimed to be 330 million years old have been reported from Pennsylvania.  “The imprints show the unmistakably webbed feet and bodies of three previously unknown, foot-long salamander-like critters that lived 100 million years before the first dinosaurs.”
    The story in a press release from the Geological Society of America contains a photo and drawing of the unusual fossils.  Spencer Lucas, paleontologist from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, said, “Body impressions like this are wholly unheard of.”
    Other interesting things were found in the same formation, including a monster in time for Halloween:

Also found in rocks from the same formation and of the same age are footprints of other relatively large animals and fossils of insects and plants, Lucas explained.  There is even a saucer-sized footprint of an unknown vertebrate that suggests larger four-footed beasts lived far earlier than ever before suspected.

The impressions were not found in the field.  They were found when examining specimens that had been sitting for decades in the Reading Public Museum Collection.

Sound familiar?  Larger, advanced creatures living much earlier than previously believed, in exquisitely preserved rock that they just “know” is hundreds of millions of years old.  Sounds like a broken record in more than one sense (09/18/2007 commentary).

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