Dinos lived 10 million yrs earlier than previously thought

Dinosaurs lived on Earth almost 10 million years earlier than previously thought, a new discovery has suggested.

An international team has in fact based its conclusion on the discovery of a four-legged ancestor of the prehistoric creatures that hails from 250 million years ago, the 'Nature' journal reported.

The large dog-sized creature, which ate meat and vegetation, seems to be a similar relation to dinosaurs as chimps are to humans, say palaeontologists who have analysed the fossils found in Tanzania and dubbed it a "proto-saur".

According to palaeontologists, dinosaurs and other close relatives such as pterosaurs -- flying reptiles often described as pterodactyls -- might have also lived much earlier than previously thought.

"Everyone loves dinosaurs. But this new evidence suggests that they were really only one of several large and distinct groups of animals that exploded in diversity in the Triassic, including silesaurs, pterosaurs, and several groups of crocodilian relatives. This goes to show that there are whole groups of animals out there that we've never even found evidence of that were very abundant during the Triassic. It's exciting because it means there is still so much chance for discovery," team leader Dr Sterling Nesbitt of Texas University said.

The new species, called Asilisaurus kongwe, is part of a sister group to dinosaurs known as silesaurs.

Silesaurs are considered dinosaur-like because they share many dinosaur characteristics but still lack key characteristics all dinosaurs share.

Even though the oldest dinosaurs discovered so far are only 230 million years old, the presence of their closest relatives 10 million years earlier implies that silesaurs and the dinosaur lineage had already diverged from common ancestors by 240 million years ago.

Silesaurs continued to live side by side with early dinosaurs throughout much of the Triassic Period (between about 250 and 200 million years ago).

And, this is the first dinosaur-like animal recovered by palaeontologists from the Triassic Period in Africa. Fossil bones of at least 14 individuals were recovered from a single bone bed in southern Tanzania making it possible to reconstruct a nearly entire skeleton. Each individual stood about 1.5 to 3 feet tall at the hips and were three to 10 feet long. They weighed about 22 to 66 pounds.

- Indian Journalist.