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‘Oldest’ Gondwana Land Creature Discovered
Monday, September 2, 2013 14:35
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A 350-million-year-old fossilised scorpion discovered in South Africa is the oldest known land animal to have lived on Gondwana, part of Earth’s former supercontinent, a university said Monday.
The new species, named Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis, provides tantalising clues about the development of life before Earth’s continents broke apart to form the globe that is familiar to us today, scientists said.
It is the earliest evidence yet of terrestrial animals on Gondwana, a land mass that included present-day Africa, South America and Australia and formed the southern part of a supercontinent called Pangaea.
The fossilised pincers of the scorpion. Credit: University of Witwatersrand
So far evidence of such early land life had only been found on the northern part of Pangaea —- “Laurasia,” which is today North America and Asia.
