University scientists help identify ‘missing link’ in dinosaur evolution
BIRMINGHAM scientists have made a stunning discovery which “blows holes” in what is known about the evolution of dinosaurs.
It follows a close look at fossils which lay unexamined at the Natural History Museum for around 60 years.
The work has helped identify a “missing link” that forces scientists to think again.
Fragments of a 245 million-yearold Teleocrater rhadinus have shed new light on how the massive creatures developed before they dominated the Earth.
Scientists from institutions including the University of Birmingham and the Fields Museum in Chicago discovered that the creature, an early cousin of dinosaurs, was much less dinosaur-like than they were expecting.
Writing in the journal Nature, they found that while it had a long neck and tail, it also walked on all fours in a style more like that of a modern monitor lizard.
Ken Angielczyk, the Field Museum’s associate curator of fossil mammals and one of the paper’s authors, said: “Teleocrater has unexpectedly crocodile-like features that are causing us to completely reassess what we thought about the earliest stages of dino- saur evolution. Surprisingly, early dinosaur relatives were pretty profoundly not dinosaur-like. Scientists generally don’t love the term ‘missing link,’ but that’s kind of what Teleocrater is – a missing link between dinosaurs and the common ancestor they share with crocodiles.”
Teleocrater, a 7ft to 10ft long and 2ft tall carnivore weighing between 20lb and 65lb, walked the Earth during the Triassic period and predates true dinosaurs by around 10 million years.
The scientists said it appeared after a large group of reptiles called archosaurs evolved into two branches; one, a bird-branch, evolved into dinosaurs and eventually birds, the other evolved into today’s crocodiles and alligators.
Teleocrater is the earliest-found member of the bird branch, but was found to have ankles more like crocodiles than dinosaurs and birds, meaning it would have had a lower, more reptilian gait.