"The real question is why do you have three close together on a rock,"
he said.

Check out the picture of the imprints at the site or the link below.

Experts Discover Rare Amphibian Imprints

Oct 30, 11:00 PM (ET)

By CATHERINE TSAI

DENVER (AP) - A rock that sat untouched in a Pennsylvania museum's
fossil collection for years has rare full-body imprints of not just one,
but three, ancient amphibians.

Researchers found the imprints in sandstone rocks collected in eastern
Pennsylvania decades ago and stored in the museum in Reading, Pa. The
body impressions of the salamander-like creatures are estimated to be
330 million years old, or about 100 million years before the first
dinosaurs appeared.

Many ancient footprints have been found, but a full-body animal
impression is unusual. The three impressions show the foot-long
temnospondyls had webbed feet and smooth skin similar to modern-day
amphibians, rather than armored bodies.

"The most remarkable thing about these is they exist at all. This is a
very rare preservation," said John Bolt, curator of fossil amphibians
and reptiles at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Details were being presented Tuesday in Denver at the annual meeting of
the Geological Society of America.

"They're really some of the oldest body imprints of land-living
amphibians," said Spencer G. Lucas of the New Mexico Museum of Natural
History and Science, who was making the presentation.

"They show you what the shape of the body was, they show you what the
texture of the skin was like," Lucas said. "These are things we don't
know from bones. They're giving us new information about the anatomy of
these long-extinct amphibians."

The fossil could indicate social behavior or even courtship, Lucas
speculated, or the impressions also could have been made at different
times.

"The real question is why do you have three close together on a rock,"
he said.

David Fillmore, who was doing postgraduate work with Kutztown University
geology professor Edward Simpson, found the impressions two years ago
when the two were studying Mauch Chunk Formation footprints in a fossil
collection at Pennsylvania's Reading Public Museum.

"We looked at each other and were speechless. It's way beyond anything
we could imagine finding," Fillmore said.
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Picture at site or:

http://tinyurl.com/2gbxko



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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071031/D8SJV0E01.html