How predatory dinosaurs turned into herbivores

In the usual view, herbivorous dinosaurs are such good-natured loots that peacefully trampled the prehistoric land, chewing on a huge leaf of fern. Predators seem to us swift, strong and deadly. This is true, but recent studies show that there can be much more in common between some species of herbivores and predators than just being part of the same food chain.

Dinosaur puzzle

It all started with a giant dinosaur skeleton discovered in southern Chile by the seven-year-old son of archaeologists. At the location of the dinosaur, whose age was estimated at 145 million years, they called Chilesaurus diegosuarezi. Continuing the excavations, archaeologists discovered the remains of about a dozen dinosaurs of this species, including four full skeletons belonging to individuals of different ages: from very young turkey-sized to almost three-meter adults.

In the photo: Chilesaurus diegosuarezi

Despite the abundance of the remains, the attempt to assemble them into something integral turned into a complex puzzle: the dinosaur possessed the features of several different families at once. He had a long neck, a small skull and the clumsy legs of a sauropodomorph (a group of giant herbivorous dinosaurs with powerful legs). The beak, teeth and frontal bone were like those of a herbivorous dinosaur of the poultry family (stegosaurs, ornithopods, triceratops). At the same time, C. diegosuarezi moved on two legs, like predatory theropods (for example, tyrannosaurs and allosaurs), and had the same upper part of the pelvic bone.

Pictured: Skeleton and reconstruction of Chilesaurus diegosuarezi

Irreconcilable relatives

However, recent studies of the Chilean dinosaur have shown that theropods and poultry birds could be more closely related than previously thought: the latter came from the former. Moreover, the authors of this theory believe that C. diegosuarezi could be one of the first poultry plants that separated from theropods.

In the photo: Tyrannosaurus

However, evolution is a long and complex process. There are poultry ones that are older than the Late Jurassic Chilesaurus. They probably evolved from earlier theropods, although the fossils of these transitional links have not yet been found. Be that as it may, there is growing evidence that poultry-gaseous ones existed only in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, but not in the early days of the Triassic.

In the photo: Triceratops

Poultry-dinosaurs are generally a mystery to paleontologists: they appeared as if suddenly and quickly adapted to conditions. Moreover, where they came from, from whom they evolved and how this happened, is not yet known. Perhaps the Chilean dinosaur will be able to shed light on this mystery.

Based on materials from Livescience.com