Wrong number of fingers leads down wrong track

Have you ever wondered why human hands have five fingers? And what about amphibians? They usually only have four. Until now, researchers assumed that this was the case with the early ancestors of today's frogs and salamanders, the Temnospondyli. However, a new find of the crocodile-like Temnospondyl Metoposaurus krasiejowensis from the late Triassic (about 225 million years old) in Poland shows five metacarpal bones and thus five fingers. As the researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Opole (Poland) note, this finding is important, because until now, fossil animal tracks may have been wrongly assigned. The results have now been published in the Journal of Anatomy.

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