Jay Novella

They could infer from these patterns of movements how well these animal-like creatures could sense their environment, right?

Because the trail gives you an idea of how well they could –

sense what's in their immediate environment.

So this information really wouldn't provide direct details about their body, obviously, right, because they're trace fossils, but it would give details that no typical body fossils could.

How far the animals, you know, could sense their environment, how far away.

which is fascinating.

So, okay, so the oldest tracks that they looked at seemed to indicate that the organisms that made them could only see about one centimeter around themselves.

That's what their models and their analysis said.

All right, based on these squiggles, it seems they could only sense about a centimeter around themselves.

And if true, though, think about it, that would be quite a find.

Because this would be the first evidence of creatures not just moving on the seafloor, but really beginning to navigate using their senses.

So that's a milestone in my book.

All right.

So now they're looking at tracks that were laid down 6 million years later.

And they showed much more of like a direct route set of being taken to resources that they might need, like, say, microbial mats.

So they're finding these trails going directly there without so much aimless wandering until they stumble upon it.

So Dr. Zakun Wang says, but as the senses of animals develop, they can sense resources from further away.

Shouldn't that be farther away?

Okay, whatever.

We can see this in the tracks.