A dog-size reptile slipped through fern-choked forests 237 million years ago in what is today Paraíso do Sul, Brazil. The animal had the body of a greyhound, a long neck and tail, and a small, nipping beak. The reptile looked remarkably like an early dinosaur. Yet it lived almost 10 million years before any other known dinosaurs.
A new study argues that this animal, Gondwanax paraisensis, in fact is one of the oldest dinosaurs ever found. Further support for this finding could solve the mystery of how and where the largest family of plant-eating dinosaurs emerged.
Since the 1800s, most paleontologists have agreed that all dinosaurs share a common ancestor that emerged about 200 million to 250 million years ago, said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist in England who was not involved in the study. They were reptiles called archosaurs, and some had shared anatomical traits. Those ancestral dinosaurs split into three major subgroups: predatory theropods, long-necked sauropods and the ornithischians. The last group included beaked herbivores such as triceratops, stegosaurus and iguanodon.
Enter the silesaurids, members of an family of small- to medium-size omnivores. The silesaurids had been considered either direct forerunners of dinosaurs, or extremely close relatives, said Rodrigo Temp Müller, who is a paleontologist in Brazil and an author of the new study. — ASHER ELBEIN /NYT
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