Science.-The oldest South American dinosaur precursor found in Brazil – Publimetro México

Madrid, 4 (European press)

The fossil of a dinosaur ancestor has been excavated in Brazil, at a site with an approximate age of 237 million years, making it the oldest in South America.

The remains were exhumed from the central region of Rio Grande do Sul state, and revealed a host of unique features of the group that includes the dinosaurs and their relatives. Paleontologists from the Federal University of Santa Maria explain in Science Direct that it fills a gap in the Brazilian record and reveals that the ancestors of dinosaurs lived in South America a million years earlier than expected.

The fossil consists of an osteosarcoma with a length of 11 cm, which corresponds to the total length of the specimen of one meter, and has diagnostic properties that allow it to be assigned to a group called Dinosauromorpha. This group includes dinosaurs and their close ancestors.

Outside of South America, there are dinosaur ancestors from Tanzania and Zambia that are likely older than the Brazilian record. However, some studies have questioned the age of these places, indicating that these deposits are younger.

Another interesting fact is based on the fossil content of the site that produced the new specimen. The fossil site has produced many skeletons of large reptiles, such as Prestosuchus chiniquensis, a relative of the crocodile, a giant top-level predator measuring 7 meters in length. These creatures were much more abundant and much larger than the ancestors of dinosaurs, which were about one meter long. Therefore, the ancestors of dinosaurs faced countless challenges before evolving into large and dominant beings in the following periods of the Mesozoic era.