"More like a slug-trail than footsteps, the tracks smear through the 565-million-year-old rock overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They were left by what may have been the first mobile organism to live on Earth.

Alex Liu of the University of Oxford, UK and his colleagues discovered them etched in the rock at Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, Canada.

The site is famous among palaeontologists for harbouring the remains of the first large complex life forms to evolve, known as Ediacarans.

"This is the earliest evidence for controlled locomotion by animals in the fossil record," says Liu." New Scientist