'' The report 's authors say their findings `` force a radical reassessment of the timing , ecology and environmental setting of the fish-tetrapod transition , as well as the completeness of the body fossil record . '' As well as finding fossilized footprints , Per Ahlberg , professor of evolutionary organismal biology at Uppsala University in Sweden , and his co-authors from the Polish Geological Institute in Warsaw also report finding several tracks of different sizes and characteristics . The tracks , they say , have distinctive `` hand '' and `` foot '' prints and no evidence of a dragging body . Ahlberg said in a video on the Nature Web site : `` The trackway shows pairs of prints -- the sort of tracks a salamander would leave if it walked . In order to make tracks like the ones found you need to have front legs and back legs that are about the same size . '' Ahlberg said the disused quarry where the fossils were discovered has yielded some of the most exciting finds he has encountered in his career as a paleontologist . Although Janvier describes the lack of skeletal evidence as `` frustrating
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Scientists have found the oldest fossilized footprints made by a four-legged creature , forcing a rethink on when fish first crawled out of water and onto land . The discovery of the footprints in a former quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains in southeastern Poland are thought to be 395 million years old -- 18 million years older than the earliest tetrapod -LRB- a vertebrate with limbs rather than fins -RRB- body fossils . The report published Thursday in the science journal Nature says the footprints of the tetrapod measure up to 26 centimeters -LRB- 10 inches -RRB- wide , which scientists say is indicative of an animal around 2.5 meters -LRB- 7.5 feet -RRB- in length . The footprints are also 10 million years older than the earliest known elpistostegids -- creatures which displayed some animal characteristics but retained fins . Philippe Janvier from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris , the reviewer of the paper , told CNN : `` It is a really stunning discovery because it 's the earliest evidence we have of tetrapods . These footprints are clear enough to attest that tetrapods were there 395 millions years ago .