• Question: what was the first walking creature?

    Asked by mattsid1 to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I think the others are better equipped to answer this…some sort of fish/amphibian thing that dragged itself out of the water? Although some fish have leggy type things that they use in the water…

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Well it would have been an amphibious tetrapod (four-limbed animal) from the Devonian period about 365 million years ago! (WAY older then the dinosaurs ;)) If you type the names Acathostega or Ichthyostega into Google you should find a few pictures of these first walking creatures that evolved form other amphibians and made the perilous journey onto land! Acathostega and Ichthyostega are some of our earliest known specimens of the first walking animals.

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      A fish! kind of like the mudskipper that we have today. In fact some of the earliest ‘footprints’ are in Ireland a couple of hours from where I went to school. I think the very earliest are in Poland though…

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