Dinosaurs dominate the earth slowly

The way to conquer the throne in the animal world of dinosaurs is longer than expected. They do not suddenly appear after the ancestors die, but in parallel exist and transfer gradually.

The new fossils found around 215 million years old have shown that some of the oldest dinosaurs existed next to the animals that have them - which are considered ancestors and their predecessors.

Many scientists previously believed that these reptiles - much like dinosaurs, but more primitive - were extinct around the time of the first dinosaurs, about 230 million years ago. They hypothesize that the first dinosaurs quickly defeated and pushed their original relatives to extinction.

However, the new discovery in the state of New Mexico, USA proves that competition takes place very long. Here, new species have been found to be dinosaurs precursors, including a 1.5 meter long bird called Dromomeron and another unnamed, three times larger. Living next to them are relatively small two-legged dinosaurs.

Illustrations of dinosaurs (the two above) and their predecessors (two children below) coexist. (Photo: LiveScience)

"When dinosaurs evolved for the first time, they were uncommon and very small," said Randall Irmis of the University of Berkeley, California, a member of the research team.

"So they are not terrestrial predators for most of the Triassic period. That only really happened in the Jurassic period when they exploded the number of species and reached the huge size that we know today. ", Irmis added.

The reconstructed skeleton of the dinosaur precursors and a number of dinosaurs from Hayden Quarry (Photo: LiveScience)

T. An