A rock that sat untouched in a Pennsylvania museum’s fossil collection for years has rare full-body imprints of not one but three ancient amphibians.
Researchers found the imprints in sandstone rocks collected in eastern Pennsylvania decades ago and stored in the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pa. The body impressions of the salamander-like creatures are estimated to be 330 million years old – which is about 100 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared.
Many ancient footprints have been found, but a full- body animal impression is unusual. The three impressions show the foot-long temnospondyls had webbed feet and smooth skin similar to modern-day amphibians rather than armored bodies.
Details were presented Tuesday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
“They’re really some of the oldest body imprints of land- living amphibians,” said Spencer Lucas of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, who made the presentation.
“They show you what the shape of the body was; they show you what the texture of the skin was like,” Lucas said. “These are things we don’t know from bones. They’re giving us new information about the anatomy of these long-extinct amphibians.”
