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A remarkable fossil found

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May 23, 2025

THE Yea area is famed for its baragwanathia fossils, fossils of the earliest vascular land plant found in the world, dated to around 415 million years ago. The site is recognised as being of international significance.

Mansfield Shire is now getting in on the action, with local fossil hunters finding evidence of amniotes, dating to 354 million to 358 million years ago. The fossil footprints show that the lizard-like amniotes evolved at least 40 million years earlier than first thought, in the early carboniforous period.

At the time, swamps were full of amphibious animals including sharks, and bony fish started appearing.

Amniotes are the ancestors of birds, reptiles and mammals.

It raises the possibility that amniotes emerged in Gondwana rather than in the northern hemisphere. The land mass of Gondwana included South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia, and the Indian subcontinent.

For a time, amniotes were the dominant land vertebrates, quickly diverging into two groups, sauropsids (including all reptiles and birds) and synapsids (monotremes, marsupials and placental mammals including humans).

The fossil footprints were found on the banks of the Broken River (known as Berrepit, in the local…

Image: Freepik.com

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