THEY are the oldest footprints on Earth, the first tracks known to have been made by a land-walking animal. The pioneering landlubber, thought to be a distant ancestor of lobsters and crabs, walked ashore 470 to 500 million years ago, some 40 million years earlier than animals were thought to have made the transition from land to sea. In what can only be described as “a giant leap for arthropods”, it probably took to the shore in a search for food or to escape a predator.
The tracks, in sandstone deposits in a quarry near Kingston, Ontario, have been known…
