Zachełmie is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the administrative district of

Gmina Zagnańsk __NOTOC__ Gmina Zagnańsk is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Kielce County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. Its seat is the village of Zagnańsk, which lies approximately north of the regional capital Kielce. T ...

, within

Kielce County __NOTOC__ Kielce County ( pl, powiat kielecki) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local gove ...

Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship The Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, also known as the Świętokrzyskie Province, and the Holy Cross Voivodeship ( pl, województwo świętokrzyskie ) is a voivodeship (province) of Poland situated in southeastern part of the country, in the histo ...

, in south-central Poland. It lies approximately east of

Zagnańsk Zagnańsk is a village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ra ...

and north-east of the regional capital

Kielce Kielce (, yi, קעלץ, Keltz) is a city in southern Poland, and the capital of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. In 2021, it had 192,468 inhabitants. The city is in the middle of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (Holy Cross Mountains), on the bank ...

. The village has a population of 568.

Zachełmie Quarry

A former limestone quarry is located near the village. The rocks are part of the Świętokrzyskie (Holy Cross) Mountains, once on the southern coast of

Laurasia Laurasia () was the more northern of two large landmasses that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent from around ( Mya), the other being Gondwana. It separated from Gondwana (beginning in the late Triassic period) during the breakup of Pan ...

, and have yielded 395-million-year-old fossil footprints of

tetrapod Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids ( reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, extinct theraps ...

s. These are believed to be the oldest tracks of four-legged animals known to

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

s, pushing back their estimated

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

by more than 18 million years. The finding also suggests that the first vertebrates to walk on land may have evolved in marine

tidal flat Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal fl ...

s or

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...

s, likely dining on animals washed up with the tides, rather than in

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...

habitats.

References

Villages in Kielce County {{Kielce-geo-stub