Local find unveils oldest known reptile evidence in the world

Close to one year ago, an English paleontologist made a startling discovery on the shore of the Bay of Fundy near Dorchester Cape.

Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist who has been hunting fossils in New Brunswick for 11 years, literally found himself standing on the find of a lifetime as he walked along the shoreline.

Lang was standing on a massive rock, rich with footprint trackways from over 300 million years ago embedded into its surface; the earliest known footprints of reptiles in the world.

Randy Miller, a paleontologist at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, where the fossil is being stored, says this is quite an excellent find.

There are footprint trackways, and we actually have very little of that material in New Brunswick, he said, adding that Nova Scotia seems to have more of an abundance of footprint trackways in places like Joggins and Cape Breton, which are rich with fossils.

New Brunswick has maybe four places theyve been seen, he noted. In this case the specimens are excellent.

Fossils are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms.

Miller says the claim that this fossil is the oldest known reptile evidence in the world isnt all that surprising, as nearby Joggins, N.S. is rich with fossils, with reptile skeletons from 300 million years ago found there in recent years.

They have to come from somewhere, they didnt just appear there 300 million years ago, said Miller referring to the reptiles that were once at Joggins.

Rocks from that era are from a time when North America was located at the equator and covered by a tropical rain forest.

Miller says the rocks found near Dorchester Cape are older than ones found at Joggins because of the type of rock the footprints were found in; this particular type of rock layer is known to underlie the rocks at Joggins. Because of this, Miller explains the rocks found near Dorchester Cape must be older than the ones at Joggins.

Chances are well find older trackways or older skeleton material eventually, he noted.

This find that Howards describing, from the morphology and the shape of the footprints, and the pattern of the trackways and a few other little features, identify these footprints as reptile, he said.

Langs fossil contained prints from a cat-sized, five-toed reptile.

Miller says the verification of these trackways is usually pretty difficult, as imprints in the rocks are sometimes deformed and its hard to tell whether there are four toes or five, and whether those toes are pointed or not.

Theyve also looked at some of the fine detail and they think they can see little marks on some of the toes that look like the scales that would be on the bottom of the toe, which are characteristic of reptiles, he said, regarding Langs team and their research on the fossil.

Miller says Lang is going to publish a paper in November claiming this find is evidence of the earliest known reptiles.

For their paper he photographed and measured everything, and looked at shape of the footprints and looked at the pattern of the footprint trackways, he said.

Lang was unavailable for comment by press time.