Is our ancestor a contemporary of dinosaurs?
The origin of man is one of the difficult questions that one can only imagine, despite the fact that the main direction of the evolution of his ape-like ancestors has already been worked out in more or less detail. But in the current picture today there are a number of points that are capable of questioning all these graceful constructions, and it is precisely at these points that we should dwell.
First, none of the creatures found during the excavations (with the exception, perhaps, homo habilis - "a man of skill", about two and a half million years old) can be our direct ancestors. And Australopithecus, and Sinanthropus and Neanderthals and many others - all of them are late descendants of "dead-end branches" - branches in the development of human ancestors.
There is a very serious doubt in our relationship with the "skillful man." That is, our real ancestors - a "transitional link" from monkey to man, was never found by anyone. Moreover, if you look closely, for example, at the Neanderthal, you can see that he did not develop over time, but on the contrary degraded … The later Neanderthal is further from modern man than the early one.
Second - a person is different from all the primates that we know of the number of chromosomes - this is a very significant change. It is possible to assume that the point, the change in the number of chromosomes, is the point of transition from monkey to man. Further, this change in the hereditary apparatus must be accompanied in large measure by a change in the structure of the body. It would be superfluous to say that no traces of such creatures were found.
Third, the oldest trace of humanoid creatures on our planet was recorded much earlier than the first primates could appear on Earth.
1931 - Geologist G. Burru from America, spoke about human footprints in layers that are 250 million years old. The pictures he took showed that where the foot put more pressure on the sand, the structure of the sandstone was changed. It is possible to imagine how this could have happened at that time, 250 million years ago - the foot simply stepped on the wet sand, and the grains of sand under the heel were pressed harder than under the toes, but one can hardly imagine as some kind of mystifier, according to many of geologists who faked the prints could have contrived to change the structure of the already petrified sandstone.
A little later, the same G. Burru reports about a dozen more similar traces found a few miles from Mount Vernon. In the Pelaxiriver channel in Texas, K. Dougherty found many dinosaur tracks of different species - and not far from them there are many human footprints that belong to the same Cretaceous period. In one place it even looks like a man was chasing a dinosaur …
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1983 - similar prints were found in Turkmenistan. Corresponding member K. Amanniyazov says about it this way:
“… The sun burns more and more, the frozen giant footprint in the stone firmament of the plateau leads us further. For the most part, the tracks are three-toed and probably belong to dinosaurs walking on the unhardened shallow ground - signs from the surf on the surface of the site with tracks are remarkably preserved. There were mainly bipedal lizards, which belong to the subclass of archosaurs.
Each of the footprints has been carefully described, measured and photographed by us. Their size in different lines is not the same. The larger ones are 86cm long and 73cm wide. Small - respectively 23cm and 21cm. The average stride length is 220cm, the smallest one is 105cm.
“They walked evenly,” Plutalov says thoughtfully. - The trace in the lines is located at almost the same distance from each other.
“There is another interesting detail,” I note. - Look, on almost all tracks the toes are more strongly depressed, not the heel.
This leads to the idea that the animals moved very quickly. And then my attention was attracted by not very clear small dents on the plateau a little to the side of the chain of dinosaur footprints, stretching parallel to them. There is no doubt that these tracks could not belong to the lizards. But then whose tracks are these? True, one of the chains, more distinct, could resemble …
I looked at the puzzled silent employees and realized that they were thinking the same - the fossilized prints were clearly similar to the traces of … the bare foot of a person. No, it would be more correct to say - the feet of a humanoid creature.
“Length 26cm,” Vitaly Ivanovich said after measuring the track. - Approximately 43rd shoe size, - Oleg picked up.
- It turns out, not so hot …
“Don't forget to take a picture,” I stop them. - It is too early to draw conclusions.
Is our ancestor a contemporary of dinosaurs? I could not take my eyes off this trail. The forefoot, 10 cm wide, is well defined, there are rounded indentations that resemble toes: big, index, middle … In the center of the right foot there is a narrowing, the heel is 5 cm wide. We found other footprints, up to 30cm long, the heels were narrower, and the foot itself was wide. And the thumb was longer, and the rest shrank towards the little finger. Yes, if the found traces actually belong to a humanoid creature, then the history of mankind will not be five or ten, but 150 million years …
… It was too early for us to draw any conclusions. It is dangerous to draw conclusions on studies of single traces. But we believed that the trail of the strange creature would still be found.
And our hope was justified. 1987, May 11 - together with geologist Zagorodnev, we surveyed the Sary-Kaya-Vostochny site. Here, for the first time, traces of that very "humanoid" creature, his right and left legs, were found. The depth of their pressing into the ground was very impressive - more than 6 cm, and the distance from the heel of the left leg to the phalangeal part of the right leg was almost 80 cm.
As you can see, this "humanoid" creature was rather big and could well join the fight with dinosaurs together with its relatives. Luck inspired us, and the next day we made a detailed mapping of the Sary-Kaya site. The result was stunning, although the site itself is located 2 km west of Central and significantly higher up the slope. But it was here that we counted about 1,000 footprints in many “walking” chains. By lunchtime, 15 chains were examined, but when we moved on to the next, we were at a loss - elongated giant footprints were shaped like a pumpkin or a light bulb.
It would be very daring to call them the tracks of a "human-like" creature, but I also could not attribute these mysterious tracks to the tracks of dinosaurs: their shape was sharply different from those previously known. And at the same time, they cannot be classified as random. There are quite a few such "pumpkins", for the most part they are pronounced and stretch for tens of meters. Only in the sixteenth chain of traces of "humanlike" we found 38 prints of unknown origin, in the other three - more than 30 such traces.
But if the footprints were not left by dinosaurs or our "humanoid" ones, then who? There was something to think about. The findings of the next two days completely baffled us. Climbing higher and higher along the slope of the ridge, we suddenly found a new area with a chain of "humanoid" footprints, and with them mysterious "pumpkins", which, no doubt, could already be called gigantic. For the description, we divided each footprint into the upper part - the phalanx and the lower part - the heel.
Most of the print length was 66cm. Half of this distance, or even more, fell on the heel, its width was 13 cm. But most of all I was impressed by the stride length of the strange creature - from 18Ocm to 210cm. Such giants could actually engage in single combat with dinosaurs! However, the absence of fingerprints on the trail suggested that the mysterious creatures could not be humanoid. An unknown dinosaur species?
When I spoke about the preliminary results to Academician V. E. Khain, he jokingly suggested calling the creatures anthroposaurs. It seems that finding out to whom these mysterious footprints belong, a dinosaur or some other unknown giant, is a task for the near future. Therefore, we named the tracker site we found Nadezhda.
Short messages about the finds of traces of the "humanoid" flashed in the media, and after some time I received a letter from America with the following content:
Dear Sirs! A Sydney newspaper dated November 27, 1983 published a TASS report that about 1,500 dinosaur prints were found in Turkmenistan. Along with dinosaur footprints, footprints resembling human footprints have been found. Members of our geological team in 1983 near Glen Rose (Texas, America) excavated human and dinosaur footprints. Traces were found under a 40-centimeter layer of chalk and clay (marl) at a distance of two meters from each other.
This summer, our team is going to continue excavations, and if you are interested in the results, we will inform you about them additionally. Considering the above, we would be very curious to learn more about your discovery and research in this area in exchange for the information you are interested in about our discoveries. We hope that the exchange of this kind of information will be mutually beneficial and extremely fruitful. Respectfully … “Some of the scientists are trying to explain these footprints by the footprints of two-legged lizards, whose foot is similar to that of a human. Unfortunately (for these theories) this explanation loses all meaning if we consider the chain of tracks - after all, the reptile's steps have completely different dynamics, the ratio of stride to foot length, and the distribution of the foot load on the ground is different …
"Interesting newspaper"