Dinosaurs Arose at Least 10 Million Years Earlier Than Thought

[kpete]

Source: Wired

Dinosaurs Arose at Least 10 Million Years Earlier Than Thought

* By Tia Ghose Email Author
* March 3, 2010 |


Scientists have discovered 243-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs’ closest relatives, pushing back the origin of dinosaurs by at least 10 million years.

The dinosaur-like creature, Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a Labrador retriever and had teeth and jawbones ideally shaped for eating plants, indicating it ate a mostly vegetarian diet.

“This shows that the lineage leading to dinosaurs goes a lot further back in time than we thought. The second thing is that it shows that there’s this real ecological diversity,” said paleontologist Randy Irmis, co-author of the study appearing Mar. 3 in Nature. “No one thought that the closest relatives to dinosaurs were these four-legged, herbivorous animals. We thought they were small carnivores.”

The earliest known dinosaur fossils are around 230 million years old. The new findings indicate that the dinosaurs and the silesaurs, the group that encompasses genus Asilisaurus, diverged more than 243 million years ago. That means dinosaurs must have originated sometime before then.





Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/oldest-dinosaur-relative/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

---

Life reconstruction of Asilisaurus kongwe from the Middle Triassic of Tanzania, with the sail‑backed archosaur Hypselorhachis in the background. Credit: Marlene Donnelly, Field Museum.

[Roland99]

1. Fascinating

Thanks for the link.

[GoneOffShore]

2. But, but, but Ken Ham says the earth is only 6000 years old!!111!

I'm series! I saw it at the Creation Museum!!11

[BeFree]

4. So

We did ride dinosaurs?

[Champion Jack]

5. Well, we know that jesus did

[Submariner]

7. And side-saddle, which is hard to do during a gallop

[Politicalboi]

18. And we didn't have

Photo shop back then, so the picture MUST be real. LOL!

[GoneOffShore]

6. And kept them as pets, too!

[KansDem]

8. Man, that's one litter box I certainly wouldn't want to clean! nt

[GoneOffShore]

21. You got me!

:rofl:

[True_Blue]

20. Those were just put here by the devil to fool all of us

Seriously that is what a fundie told me once.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

23. That's to be expected, since his textbook is 3,500 years old.

He just needs to update his library.

[Soylent Brice]

3. ...and fundie heads across the country simultaneously explode...

:rofl:

[pundaint]

9. Just a trick God played on scientists when he created the World. He's such a joker.

[jgraz]

10. Teh Sientist were WRONG!!! Evalution is a FRAWD!!!!

You know it's coming.

[activa8tr]

12. I love how they get all upset when there's more and more and more

science for them to deny. They just wish the scientists would stop discovering all this new stuff, 'cause it makes their job OH SO MUCH harder..."to preach the literal word of their Lord"!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

11. Very cool. Another great dino discovery this week is the snake in the sauropod nests:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/snake-eats-babydinosaurs

This is truly amazing - a miraculously preserved ancient snake in the nest of a titanosaur, a whole life style right there in fossils. Since the snake's jaws are not the kind that could be dislocated to allow swallowing an egg, the creature apparently waited in the nests until the hatchlings broke open the eggs. Then it could eat the hatchlings.

[panzerfaust]

24. "miraculously preserved" - actually a mudslide I think. No divine intervention needed.

Or, perhaps it could get claimed by those pushing for John Paul to get promoted?

Sorry, just that the "M" word always sets my teeth on edge a bit - being an event inexplicable by the laws of nature - thus a supernatural event ("Miracle of the Mass, q.v.)

It really is a remarkable discovery, together with the apparent fact that this species of snake lasted until we showed up on the scene.

[Nothing Without Hope]

25. Actually, I'm a scientist myself, and I understand your nervousness about the M word.

Perhaps "extraordinarily," as in :wow:, might have been a better choice, but I doubt anybody thought I actually meant divine intervention. O8)

[Golden Raisin]

13. How come the 2 giant sauropods

on Noah's Ark didn't sink it? Or the 2 tyrannosaurs didn't gobble up all the other pairs of animals?

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. Wow..that means man is also 243-million-years-old .

Just imagine..

" for the Bible tells me so"

[jgraz]

31. Just this man

[cornermouse]

15. The sad thing about this?

That we're in the process of destroying what took so long to evolve and grow.

[TransitJohn]

27. We're destroying dinosaur?

I don't understand what you've postulated here.

[cornermouse]

28. We're destroying the planet

and ourselves in the process.

[dipsydoodle]

16. John McCain prolly could've told them that

He remembers it.

[Bitwit1234]

17. Is that how the republicans know that people and dinosaurs

existed at the same time. And that people (strike that) Fred Flintstone rode dinosaurs around like horses.

[Solly Mack]

19. k/r

[panzerfaust]

22. So, once again the "scientists" are wrong!

Its all lies and made up stuff I tell yah. Look at the way they are always changing things. Truth does not change.

My gosh, they wrote for years and years about something called a "brontosaurus" - even had fossilized skeletons that were so called - and it turns out that "brontosaurus" never existed.

Or all that baloney about a "planet" named Pluto: Again, does NOT EXIST. Nope, and never did.

Science is just what scientists do to get published and feed their families: The made-up stories of science are nothing compared to the Eternal Truth of God (You get to pick which god, but don't be wrong - or you will pay for eternity)

As post-modernists might say at their cocktail parties "Truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense other than being a shared vision within a given culture. Truth is created by dialog rather than discovered in nature"

[TransitJohn]

26. Teach the controversy.

[golfguru]

29. I am thinking....did global warming destroy dinosaurs?

why else they would just die out? They were strong and robust
and had plenty of food & water with no competition from man
or any other creature.

[David Zephyr]

30. Cool.

The planet was better off when they dominated it for millions and millions of years as opposed to what we've done in less than 100,000 years.