Fossil footprints found in Australia the oldest evidence of amniotes – video

Fossilised footprints found in Australia provide the oldest evidence for reptiles on Earth, a discovery that suggests the group evolved in the southern rather than the northern hemisphere, and some 35-40 million years earlier than thought. A 35cm trackway of clawed footprints found in sandstone on Taungurung country, near Mansfield in eastern Victoria, have been dated to between 354 and 358m years old in a paper published in Nature, making them the oldest on record. The previously oldest fossil records, from Europe and North America, are estimated at 318m years old

• ‘Turning point’: claw print fossils found in Australia rewrites story of amniotes by 40 million years