Scientists find remains of a huge ancient herbivore

BERLIN — A giant, plant-eating creature with a beak-like mouth and reptilian features may have roamed the Earth during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, scientists said Thursday.

In a paper published Thursday by the journal Science, Polish researchers claim that their find overturns the notion that the only giant plant-eaters at the time were dinosaurs.

The elephant-sized creature, known as

after a village in southern Poland where its remains were found, belonged to the same evolutionary branch as mammals.

Similar fossils from socalled dicynodonts have been found elsewhere, but they were dated to be from an earlier period, before a series of natural disasters wiped out most species on Earth.