When people think of dinosaurs, people think that they have come out of nowhere and just suddenly dinosaurs are on the Earth. Reality is less dramatic though. Scientists say that the dinosaurs came out gradually and not as sudden as many people believe.
A discovery in Brazil is showing that dinosaurs have gradually come and evolved over time. The fossils in Brazil show dinosaurs and a dinosaur precursor together. The dinosaur precursor is a type of lagerpetid.
The lagerpetid is a new one called Ixalerpeton while the dinosaurs are from the saurischian group. They were found in one of the oldest rock group to have dinosaur fossils. The finding shows that dinosaurs and dinosaur precursors were together for sometime before dinosaurs came to dominate the Earth.
Dinosaurs have evolved gradually over time, though this would be the first time that dinosaur fossils were together with dinosaur precursors. Max Langer from Universidade de Sao Paolo said that with the find, it shows that when dinosaurs came they did not overtake other animals in a fast way. The dinosaurs and those before them overlapped for sometime.
The lagerpetid found shows some of the early characteristics of dinosaurs, according to Phys Org. The fossil found had the skull, scapular and forelimbs. Langer also believed that the early dinosaurs were carnivorous. As has been noted, the lagerpetid shows how dinosaurs would later on have almost the same physical traits.
Knowing all about the dinosaur precursors is important. Langer and other scientists would be taking CT scans of the lagerpetid fossil in order to find out about its anatomy. The rocks from which the fossils were taken would also be studied, as Science Daily reports. Studying them might give the researchers more clues as to how the two co-existed together.
Knowing how the dinosaurs and dinosaur precursors lived together would help in understanding their relationship with each other more. This would also help in knowing how dinosaurs have come, and that dinosaurs came out gradually and not as sudden as people think. Also discovered earlier was an almost complete fossil of a bird-like dinosaur.
