Both dinosaurs and alligators have the same ancestors from the mid-Triassic period, roughly 230 million years ago. “It’s a bit of a stretch to that alligator and dinosaur are the same species, but that’s what the fossil record tells us,” said study co-author David Evans, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
“Alligator is an archosaur, which is a group of dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and the ornithischians.” Photos of the Alligator-Dinosaur Fossils] The fossilized skull of an allosaurus. A team of researchers led by a University of Texas at Austin paleoanthropologist has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived during the late Triassic Period.
The discovery, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, adds to the growing body of evidence that dinosaurs and their relatives were more closely related to each other than previously thought, the researchers said.The new dinosaur, named Allosaurus, lived in what is now southern China and was about the size and shape of modern-day crocodiles.
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Why are crocodiles not considered dinosaurs?
Crocodiles and lizards have legs that sprawl out to the side. Their thigh bones are very close to the ground. They are running with a side-to-side motion. Dinosaurs also had a long neck, which allowed them to hold their breath for long periods of time. The neck of a crocodile, for example, can hold a person underwater for up to 30 minutes.
What dinosaur did alligators evolve?
The deinosuchus is an extinct group of alligatoroid crocodilians, related to modern alligators and caimans, that lived about 73 million years ago.
What animal is closest to dinosaurs?
In fact, birds are commonly thought to be the only animals around today that are direct descendants of dinosaurs. Next time you visit a farm, take a moment to think about it. The closest living relatives of the most incredible predator the world has ever known are the squawking chickens.
Are there any dinosaurs still alive?
They are called birds because they can be found thriving all over the planet. Birds are the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs, according to most paleontologists. But a new study suggests that birds may not be as closely related to dinosaurs as previously thought. The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, shows that some of the most distinctive features of modern birds, such as their wings and feathers, were not present in dinosaurs at all.
Instead, the researchers , they may have evolved independently in birds and dinosaurs, and may even have been present at the same time in both groups. The findings could help scientists better understand the evolution of birds from dinosaurs and shed light on the evolutionary relationships between the two groups, study co-author David Evans, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to show that the features that make birds so different from other dinosaurs are actually very similar to those of dinosaurs,” he . Evans and his colleagues used a combination of computer simulations and fossil evidence to test the idea that bird feathers evolved from dinosaur feathers.
What is a true dinosaur?
Dinosaurs are extinct animals with upright limbs that lived on land during the mesozoic era (252 to 66 million years ago). Paleontologists have thought about dinosaurs for a long time. For one thing, it doesn’t account for the fact that some dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor, were bipedal, while others, like Triceratops and Stegosaurus were quadrupedal.
In addition, the term “dinosaur” has been used to refer to a wide variety of animals, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and even plants. So, for example, if you were to ask someone to define a dinosaur, they might , “A dinosaur is a large herbivore with a long neck and a short tail.”
However, this is not the same as ing that dinosaurs were large, long-necked animals that walked on all fours and had long necks and tails. Instead, these animals were more closely related to each other than to modern-day birds and mammals.
Are Komodo dragons dinosaurs?
Komodo dragon is a living dinosaur and the world’s largest lizard. Komodo dragons can grow up to 3-4 metres in length and weigh over 100 kilogrammes.
Are Crocs dinosaurs?
Crocodiles are not dinosaurs, but both crocodiles and dinosaurs came from the crown group Archosaurs. Birds, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs were part of the archosaurs. The last 65 million years have seen the evolution of modern-day birds.
The crocodile is a member of the family Crocodyliformes, which includes all crocodilians, including alligators, caimans, alligator-like reptiles, lizards, snakes, turtles, birds and mammals. They are the largest land animals on Earth and are found in tropical and subtropical regions around the world.
What killed the dinosaurs?
Scientists already know that an asteroid—or perhaps a comet—struck Earth off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The extinction of the dinosaurs is thought to have been caused by a decades-long impact winter at the Chicxulub crater. The image was taken from a distance of about 1.5 million miles (2.7 million kilometers) from Earth.
What is the oldest species on Earth?
Most scientists agree that the oldest living species still around are those that have been around for at least 100 million years. The oldest known fossil of a human-like creature was found in China’s Yunnan Province in 2008.
What existed before dinosaurs?
The pelycosaurs, archosaurs, and therapsids dominatedterrestrial life for approximately 120 million years. Theropods, such as the T. rex, the Velociraptor, Pteranodon, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, etc., were the dominant predators of the Mesozoic Era. Theropod dinosaurs were not the only predators in the Jurassic Period, however. Some of these groups included the pterosaurs (pterodactyls), the ornithischians (bird-like dinosaurs), and even the mosasaurs (sea-dwelling carnivores).
These groups were also the most diverse in terms of body size, with the largest being the tyrannosauroids, which had a wingspan of up to 30 feet (9 meters).
