Although the fossils of several older proto-frogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest " true frog " is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona.

At the time, these were the oldest fossils discovered in Australia, though this record has now been far surpassed.

The oldest known fossils assigned to Equidae date from the early Eocene, 54 million years ago.

Hence, fossils range in age from the youngest at the start of the Holocene Epoch to the oldest from the Archaean Eon, up to 3. 4 billion years old.

Earth ’ s oldest fossils are the stromatolites consisting of rock built from layer upon layer of sediment and other precipitants.

The continued study of these oldest fossils is paramount to calibrate complementary molecular phylogenetics models.

When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, the oldest animal fossils were those from the Cambrian Period, now known to be about 540 million years old.

Hymenoptera originated in the Triassic, the oldest fossils belonging to the family Xyelidae.

Isolated Petrous part of the temporal bone | petrosals of Djarthia murgonensis, Australia's oldest marsupial fossils

The oldest metatherian fossils ( Metatheria being a larger clade that groups marsupials with some of their extinct relatives ) are found in present-day China. About 100 mya, the supercontinent Pangaea was in the process of splitting into the northern continent Laurasia and the southern continent Gondwana, with what would become China and Australia already separated by the Tethys Ocean.

The oldest known fossils of bony fish are about 420 million years ago, which are also transitional fossils, showing a tooth pattern that is in between the tooth rows of sharks and bony fishes.

Their prototypes are the oldest winged fossils, go back to the Devonian, and are different in several respects from the wings of other insects.

In 2011 older modern human remains were identified in the UK ( Kents Cavern at 41, 000BP ) and Italy ( Grotta del Cavallo at 43, 000BP ), nonetheless the Romanian fossils are still among the oldest remains of Homo sapiens in Europe, so they may be representative of the first such people to have entered the continent.

One of the fossils found — a male, adult jawbone — has been dated to be between 34, 000 and 36, 000 years old, which would make it one of the oldest fossils found to date of modern humans in Europe.

The area is also home to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which contains the Olduvai Gorge, where some of the oldest hominid fossils are found, as well as the Ngorongoro Crater.

Tanzania is home to some of the oldest human settlements unearthed by archaeologists, including stone tools and fossils of hominids found in and around Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, an area often referred to as " The Cradle of Mankind ".

The oldest hominid fossils ever discovered in Tanzania also come from Laetoli and are the 3. 6 to 3. 8 million year old remains of Australopithecus afarensis — Louis Leakey had found what he thought was a baboon tooth at Laetoli in 1935 ( which was not identified as afarensis until 1979 ), a fragment of hominid jaw with three teeth was found there by Kohl-Larsen in 1938 – 39, and in 1974 – 75 Mary Leakey recovered 42 teeth and several jawbones from the site.

Just to the southeast of the park is Olduvai Gorge, where many of the oldest hominid fossils and artifacts have been found.

The oldest habitation discovered in the Philippines is located at the Tabon Caves and dates back to approximately 50, 000 years ; while items there found such as burial jars, earthenware, jade ornaments and other jewelry, stone tools, animal bones, and human fossils dating back to 47, 000 years ago.

The oldest fossils are known from the shallow seas around the North Pacific, with animals spreading to the European coasts and Southern Hemisphere only much later, during the Pliocene.

The oldest fossils known of the modern coconut date from the Eocene period from around 37 to 55 million years ago and were found in Australia and India.

The oldest alcid fossil is Hydrotherikornis from Oregon dating to the Late Eocene while fossils of Aethia and Uria go back to the Late Miocene.

* The oldest and largest is the Brahmic family of India and Southeast Asia, in which vowels are marked with diacritics and syllable-final consonants, when they occur, are indicated with ligatures, diacritics, or with a special vowel-canceling mark.

The oldest of these granitic rocks, at 114 million years, occur along the Merced River Gorge west of the valley.

One of stratigraphy's basic concepts is codified in the Law of Superposition, which simply states that, in an undeformed stratigraphic sequence, the oldest strata occur at the base of the sequence.

The oldest modern polecat fossils occur in Germany, Britain and France, and date back to the Middle Pleistocene.

It does not occur within the oldest copies of the texts of Matthew and Luke.

The oldest works in which references to Yeshu occur are the Tosefta and the Talmud, although some scholars consider the references to Yeshu to be post-Talmudic additions.

This date is sometimes given as the year of the town's founding, making it one of the oldest neighborhoods in what is now New Orleans, but development as a town as opposed to a private plantation did not actually occur until about 1800.

The oldest known caecilian is Eocaecilia micropodia, also from Arizona, while the earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China.

Although large Chinese bridges of wooden construction existed at the time of the Warring States, the oldest surviving stone bridge in China is the Zhaozhou Bridge, built from 595 to 605 AD during the Sui Dynasty.

By far the longest canal was the Grand Canal of China, still the longest canal in the world today, and the oldest extant one.

With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest civilizations.

Cavalry tactics in China were enhanced by the invention of the saddle-attached stirrup by at least the 4th century, as the oldest reliable depiction of a rider with paired stirrups was found in a Jin Dynasty tomb of the year 322 AD.

Although this method of charting seems to have existed in China even prior to this publication and scientist, the greatest significance of the star maps by Su Song is that they represent the oldest existent star maps in printed form.

The oldest confirmed written mention of dominoes in China comes from the Former Events in Wulin ( i. e. the capital Hangzhou ) written by the Yuan Dynasty ( 1271 – 1368 ) author Zhou Mi ( 1232 – 1298 ), who listed " pupai " ( gambling plaques or dominoes ) as well as dice as items sold by peddlers during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song ( r. 1162 – 1189 ).

The oldest surviving gun, made of bronze, has been dated to 1288 because it was discovered at a site in modern-day Acheng District, Heilongjiang, China, where the Yuan Shi records that battles were fought at that time.

* Anagama kiln-the Asian anagama kiln has been used since medieval times and is considered the oldest style of production kiln, brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century.

Tianyi Chamber, founded in 1561 by Fan Qin during the Ming Dynasty, is the oldest existing library in China.

Tianyi Chamber, founded in 1561 by Fan Qin during the Ming Dynasty, is the oldest existing library in China.

* 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it oldest known dated printed book.

China ’ s largest steelmaker Baosteel Group and Jiangnan Shipyard, one of China's oldest shipbuilders are both located in Shanghai.

One of the oldest references to the mobile siege tower in ancient China was ironically a written dialogue primarily discussing naval warfare.

The oldest remains of a tiger-like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis, have been found in China and Java.

The oldest known use of writing in China was in divination in the royal court.

* May 11 – The Diamond Sūtra, the oldest known surviving dated book, is printed in China.

The county remains one of the oldest levels of government in China and significantly predates the establishment of provinces in the Yuan Dynasty ( 1279 – 1368 ).

In China, the 13th century saw the beginnings of rocketry and the manufacture of the oldest gun still in existence, a descendant of the earlier fire-lance, a gunpowder-fueled flamethrower that could shoot shrapnel along with fire.

The oldest, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia region of China.

The oldest known hydraulic engineers of China were Sunshu Ao ( 6th century BCE ) of the Spring and Autumn Period and Ximen Bao ( 5th century BCE ) of the Warring States period, both of whom worked on large irrigation projects.

The oldest surviving wooden halls in China date to the Tang Dynasty ( 618 – 907 CE ).