Scientists Uncover The Earliest Known Animal To Have Walked Upright On All Fours

Plants and Animals





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What Bunostegos might have looked like when alive 260-million-years ago. Morgan Turner/Brown University

With a weird knobbly face and looking like a cross between a lizard and a hippo, this pre-reptile is now thought to be the earliest known animal to have walked upright on all fours. Know as Bunostegos akokanensis, it lived about 260-million-years ago, plodding around what is now the African country of Niger. Belonging to a group of animals called pareiasaurs, some argue that they eventually gave rise to turtles, though this is debated.