Study identifies Amazon and Sahara regions as the birthplace of your earliest
4 mins read

Study identifies Amazon and Sahara regions as the birthplace of your earliest

A new study led by researchers at the University College London indicates that the earliest dinosaurs may originate in ancient Gondwana regions, including areas that are now part of Africa and South America. The results, published in the journal Current Biology, suggest that the remains of the first dinosaurs may be undetected in the Amazon basin, the Congo basin and the Sahara desert due to inaccessibility and lack of research efforts, According to Discover Magazine.

“Dinosaurs are well studied, but we still don’t really know where they came from. The fossil record has gaps so large that it can’t be taken to nominal value,” said Joel Heath, the main author and doctoral student at UCL Earth Sciences and the Natural History Museum in London , according to popular science.

The research team investigated well -known fossils and evolutionary trees of dinosaurs and their close reptile relatives to bring their relationships together. They stood for gaps in the fossil record by treating areas without fossils such as missing information, rather than areas where there are no fossils, Newsweek reported.

“Although previous studies have focused on southern South America and southern Africa as origin areas for dinosaurs, based on where their fossils first appeared, we suggest that gaps in the fossil record – especially in regions that today include the Sahara desert and Amazon’s rainforest – have potential To reveal where the first dinosaurs lived, “Heath said.

Currently, the oldest known dinosauri fossils return about 230 million years and have been found in southern regions, including Brazil, Argentina and Zimbabwe. Species such as Eoraptor and Herrasaurus from Argentina are among the earliest known dinosaurs, according to Discover Magazine.

The earliest dinosaurs were much smaller than their descendants, around the size of a chicken or a dog, unlike later species like Brontosaurus, weighed 33,000 pounds. The first dinosaurs went on two legs and are believed to have been omnivores.

“Our model suggests that the first dinosaurs may originate in Gondwana, a Western low-latic area. It was a warmer and drier environment than previously thought, consisting of desert and savannia regions,” leaving Heath, quoted by Science Daily.

The team found the strongest support for a Gondwanan origin with low latitude in the model in the model that counted Sileseaurids, traditionally regarded as cousins ​​to dinosaurs but not dinosaurs themselves, as ancestors of ornithic dinosaurs. Ornithischians is mysteriously absent from the fossil register from the first years of the dinosaur, which is puzzling given that the latter included herbivores such as steposaurus and triceratops.

Despite the potential importance of these regions, no dinosauri fossils have been found in the areas of Africa and South America that once formed this part of Gondwana. This absence is probably due to a combination of inaccessibility and lack of research efforts in these areas.

Paleontologists suspect dinosaurs developed somewhere else and expanded to the places where we first find them. Suitable rocks in the Amazon are usually buried under lush vegetation, and the climate in the Amazon pool and the Sahara desert prevent explosion of fossils, according to IFLscience.


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“The results indicate that the first dinosaurs adapted to hot and dry environments. Of the three main groups of dinosaurs, the Sauropods, which include Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, preferred, a warm climate, which remains on lower latitudes of the original soil,” noted Philip Mannion , a researcher at UCL Earth Sciences.

“The proof indicates that the other two groups, theropodern and the ornithisisians may have developed the ability to generate their own body heat a few million years later, in the Jurassic period, which allowed them to thrive in cooler regions, including the poles” added Mannion,

To learn more about dinosaur Origins, the research group built computer models to work back in time from the oldest known dinosaurs to the group’s origin. They ran their model on three proposed evolutionary trees, including gaps in the fossil register and possible geographical barriers.

“There are many areas in the world that are quite neglected,” Heath said. “The final test of our models will be if primitive dinosaur stems are found in the Amazon, the Sahara desert and other ancient low -literature parts of Gondwana,” he said, he said, According to 20 minute.