Nick
Garland
Founder and Editor
Animals emerged from the water and clamored onto land more than 300 million years ago, but paleontologists are looking for even more details about the transition. A healed broken bone that later fossilized is offering some new and unexpected clues.
A new fossil from Australia pushes back the origin of tetrapods, or four-limbed animals, more than two million years.
The creature, Ossinodus, lived during the Devonian Period 333 million years ago in what would have been temperate forests.
Researchers analyzed only one Ossinodus radius bone from the front leg but this was a special and rare bone. The scientists used CT imaging to examine the structure of the bone to discover that it contained a partially healed fracture. But how did it become fractured?