Geologists Find 310-Million-Year-Old Reptile Footprints in Grand Canyon National Park

The fossil trackway covers a boulder that rests along the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon National Park. “A recent rockfall along the Bright Angel Trail produced two blocks of fine-grained quartz arenite from the Manakacha Formation,” explained University of Nevada’s Professor Stephen Rowland and San Diego State University’s Dr. Mario Caputo. “The two blocks display part and counterpart surfaces containing a conspicuous vertebrate trackway consisting of 28 tracks, preserved as impressions on one block and natural casts on the opposing block. The trackway extends about 3.3 feet (1 m) across the width of the fallen blocks.” The Bright Angel Trail trackway dates to the Carboniferous period when one massive supercontinent called Pangaea dominated the world, and is unusual for several reasons. It’s the oldest trackway ever discovered in the Grand Canyon in an interval of rocks that nobody thought would have trackways in it, and they’re among the earliest reptile tracks on Earth,” Professor Rowland said...MORE