Conceptual drawing of Mosineia making the trackway Protichnites

''Mosineia'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

euthycarcinoid Euthycarcinoidea are an enigmatic group of extinct possibly amphibious arthropods that ranged from Cambrian to Triassic times. Fossils are known from Europe, North America, Argentina, Australia and Antarctica. Description The euthycarcinoid body ...

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s that lived on tidal flats of

Laurentia Laurentia or the North American Craton is a large continental craton that forms the ancient geological core of North America. Many times in its past, Laurentia has been a separate continent, as it is now in the form of North America, although ...

at what is now central

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

from the Middle

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

to the Late Cambrian. It contains a single species, ''Mosineia macnaughtoni''. Associated trace fossil evidence suggests that this genus spent some of its time

subaerial In natural science, subaerial (literally "under the air"), has been used since 1833,Subaerial
in the Merriam ...

ly, possibly to mate and to feed on the microbial mats that blanketed the beaches. The genus is named after Mosinee---the city in Marathon County, Wisconsin, near which the fossils were found. The collecting site is known as

Blackberry Hill Blackberry Hill is a Konservat-Lagerstätte of Cambrian age located within the Elk Mound Group in Marathon County, Wisconsin. It is found in a series of quarries and outcrops that are notable for their large concentration of exceptionally prese ...

, which is a well known Konservat-Lagerstätte that produces abundant exceptionally preserved

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

History of discovery

The discovery of ''Mosineia'' was a milestone in geologic history. Since the mid-1800s, trackways named ''

Protichnites ''Protichnites'' is an ichnogenus of trace fossil consisting of the imprints made by the walking activity of certain arthropods. It consists of two rows of tracks and a medial furrow between the two rows. This furrow, which may be broken, set at ...

'' (Greek for "first footprints") had been found on

tidal flat strata in North America. Whatever animal produced them was one of the first to emerge from the sea; however, the identity of that animal remained unknown. The new fossils, found in the late 1900s and early 2000s, including body fossils of the animal itself (''Mosineia'') and fossils linking that animal to the trackways, thus solved a mystery that had lasted over 150 years.

References

External links

Web page from This View of Life--A New Look at the First Footprints on Land

Article in MAPS Digest--The First Land-Walkers: Mystery Solved
{{Taxonbar, from1=Q77624431, from2=Q85786407 Paleontology in Wisconsin Fossil taxa described in 2010 Cambrian arthropods of North America Cambrian genus extinctions