for working with philanthropies, a

The hooked claws are a crucial identification clue, said study co-author and paleontologist Per Ahlberg at Uppsala University in Sweden.“It’s a walking animal,” he said.

Only animals that evolved to live solely on land ever developed claws. The earliest vertebrates -- fish and amphibians – never developed hard nails and remained dependent on watery environments to lay eggs and reproduce.But the branch of the evolutionary tree that led to modern reptiles, birds and mammals – known as amniotes -- developed feet with nails or claws fit for walking on hard ground.“This is the earliest evidence we’ve ever seen of an animal with claws,” said Sumida.

At the time the ancient reptile lived, the region was hot and steamy and vast forests began to cover the planet. Australia was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.The fossil footprints record a series of events in one day, Ahlberg said. One reptile scampered across the ground before a light rain fell. Some raindrop dimples partially obscured its trackways. Then two more reptiles ran by in the opposite direction before the ground hardened and was covered in sediment.

Fossil “trackways are beautiful because they tell you how something lived, not just what something looked like,” said co-author John Long, a paleontologist at Flinders University in Australia.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. (AP) — Some people thought the

marked a cultural defeat for biblical fundamentalism.But a century after what was dubbed the Trial of the Century, the issue is far from settled. Many American adults still embrace creationism — a belief in the literal truth of the Genesis account of the origins of the Earth and humanity.

To be sure, Tennessee public schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted in 1925 for violating a state law against teaching human evolution. But it appeared to be a pyrrhic victory for creationists.That’s because the star of the prosecution team — populist politician William Jennings Bryan — faltered when he took the stand as an expert witness. He struggled to defend the Bible’s miraculous and mysterious stories.