As the title suggests, this discovery came from a Grand Canyon cliff collapse which showcased the fact that two animals crossed this exact area 313 million years ago.
To everyone’s dismay, this was only discovered in 2016 by one Norwegian geologist known as Allan Krill that was visiting the site with his students from the University of Nevada.
His story was depicted by CNN and as you can tell already, this was definitely worth a news segment right off the bat, especially considering the fact that this is by far the oldest series of fossilized tracks that have ever been discovered in the Grand Canyon, to begin with.
When he first came across them he didn’t have the technology nor the means to actually study the tracks so he snapped as many pictures as he could of them and send them over to his colleague Stephen Rowland so as to make sure that he knows the truth behind the discovery before anyone else.
That is how he uncovered the fact that these are in fact the oldest vertebrate tracks in the Grand Canyon, which is no simple feat as there are hundreds if not thousands of ancient tracks scattered all over the place as we know it.
The creatures that made the tracks are relatively unknown by now but we do know that they moved in a lateral-sequence walk patter, aka they moved their legs from the side first then they moved the other side’s legs similarly to modern cats and dogs when they’re slowly walking around.
