ANCIENT animal tracks dated almost two-million-years-old have been unearthed accidentally by scientists from Heriot-Watt University.
The fossils were discovered by Tessa Plint, a PhD researcher specialising in palaeoecology, and Dr Clayton Magill during geological field work at the world-renowned Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania.
It is not known what species were responsible for leaving the tracks, but the scientists say they were formed by cloven-hoofed mammals, such as prehistoric antelope or gazelle. The fossils also reveal the animals left their hoof prints as they walked across a layer of freshly fallen ash resulting from a nearby volcanic eruption around 1.8 million years ago.
Plint said: “We weren’t there to prospect for fossil tracks, so finding them was 100% a matter of looking down in the right place at the right time!”
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