These footprints pose a puzzle for researchers (Photo: Miengah Abrahams)

This is a headache.

More than 200 million years ago, a mysterious animal left bird-like footprints in what is now South Africa – 60 million years before birds evolved.

For years, researchers have wondered what could have left these three-toed tracks and whether it was a dinosaur, one of its cousins, a lizard or something else. The tracks do not match those of any species known at this location at the time.

Scientists have tentatively named the creature Trisauropodiscus, but have no further information about what the footprints discovered in the middle of the last century might have left behind.

A new study of the tracks has now discovered two different types of prints, the first resembling the tracks of certain non-avian dinosaurs and the second very similar in size and proportions to bird footprints.

The fossilized prints date to the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods, 237 to 175 million years ago, while evidence of Archeopteryx, which many think was the first bird, appeared in the middle to late Jurassic period, 175 to 145 million years ago. a year ago. . Modern birds evolved in the Cretaceous period.

In the journal PLOS ONE, authors Miengah Abrahams and Emese Bordy from the University of Cape Town shed light on the still unclear origins of the first birds.

The early footprints resemble those of modern birds (Photo: Miengah Abrahams)

“Birds are one of the most diverse groups of animals on Earth, with approximately 10,000 species.” [existing] species, but their early evolutionary history is still mysterious, they said.

“The dinosaur origin of modern birds (Neornithes) clearly points to Maniraptora, a group of Therapos, but the timing of the emergence of birds is controversial.”

Blue tit

Yes, that’s a dinosaur (Image: Getty)

“The oldest fossil record of basal bodies.” [early] Birds span the Middle to Late Jurassic, while dinosaur footprints with bird-like morphologies have been known since the Late Triassic.”

However, there is still debate about the earliest bird-like fossil, that of Protoavis, which is widely believed not to be a bird. This means that the transition from pterosaur to bird is not yet clear.

The authors say the results show that bird-like feet evolved much earlier than thought, possibly by 60 million years, and could help shed new light on the origins of birds.

They add that the second type of tracks, which look more like those of birds, likely came from a yet-to-be-discovered tridactyl archosaur, the ancestor of modern birds.