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"What may be the oldest fossil footprint yet found was discovered in June 1968 by William J. Meister, an amateur fossil collector, and reportedy, an evolutionist. If the print is what it appears to be-the impression of a sandaled shoe crushing a trilobite-it would have been made 300 to 600 million years ago and would be sufficient either to overturn all conventionally accepted ideas of human and geological evolution or to prove that a shoe-wearing biped from another world had once visited the planet.
Meister made his potentially disturbing find during a rock-and fossil-hunting expedition to Antelope Spring, 43 miles west of Delta, Utah. He was accompanied by his wife and two daughters, and by Mr. And Mrs. Francis Shape and their two daughters.
The party had already discovered several fossils of trilobites when Meister split open a two-inch-thick slab of rock with his hammer and discovered the outrageous print. The rock fell open 'like a book,' revealing:
on one side the footprint of a human with trilobites right in the footprint itself. The other half of the rock slab showed an almost perfect mold of the footprint and fossils. Amazingly the human was wearing a sandal!
Trilobites were small marine invertebrates, the relatives of crabs and shrimps, that flourished for some 320 million years before becoming extinct 280 million years ago(according to science).
Humans are currently thought to have emerged between 1 and 2 million years ago and to have been wearing well-shaped footwear for no more than a few thousand years.
The sandal that seems to have crushed a living trilobite was 101/4inches long and 31/2inches wide; the heel is indented slightly more than the sole, as a human shoe print would be.
Meister took the rock to Melvin Cook, a professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, who advised him to show the specimen to the university geologists. When Meister was unable to find a geologist willing to examine the print, he went to a local newspaper, The Deseret News. Before long, the find received national publicity.
In a subsequent news conference, the curator of the Museum of Earth Science at the University of Utah, James Madsen, said:
There were no men 600 million years ago. Neither were there monkeys or bears or ground sloths to make pseudo human tracks. What man-thing could possibly have been walking about on this planet before vertebrates even evolved?
Meister made his potentially disturbing find during a rock-and fossil-hunting expedition to Antelope Spring, 43 miles west of Delta, Utah. He was accompanied by his wife and two daughters, and by Mr. And Mrs. Francis Shape and their two daughters.
The party had already discovered several fossils of trilobites when Meister split open a two-inch-thick slab of rock with his hammer and discovered the outrageous print. The rock fell open 'like a book,' revealing:
on one side the footprint of a human with trilobites right in the footprint itself. The other half of the rock slab showed an almost perfect mold of the footprint and fossils. Amazingly the human was wearing a sandal!
Trilobites were small marine invertebrates, the relatives of crabs and shrimps, that flourished for some 320 million years before becoming extinct 280 million years ago(according to science).
Humans are currently thought to have emerged between 1 and 2 million years ago and to have been wearing well-shaped footwear for no more than a few thousand years.
The sandal that seems to have crushed a living trilobite was 101/4inches long and 31/2inches wide; the heel is indented slightly more than the sole, as a human shoe print would be.
Meister took the rock to Melvin Cook, a professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, who advised him to show the specimen to the university geologists. When Meister was unable to find a geologist willing to examine the print, he went to a local newspaper, The Deseret News. Before long, the find received national publicity.
In a subsequent news conference, the curator of the Museum of Earth Science at the University of Utah, James Madsen, said:
There were no men 600 million years ago. Neither were there monkeys or bears or ground sloths to make pseudo human tracks. What man-thing could possibly have been walking about on this planet before vertebrates even evolved?