Dinosaurs share common ancestors with crocodiles

Before the dinosaurs took over the Earth, their crocodile-like cousins ​​walked in what is now Tanzania.

The discovery of the carnivorous reptile named Teleocrater rhadinus , weighing 9 to 30 kg, 2-3 meters long, has long and tail necks, lived about 245 million years ago in the Triassic period, helping scientists fill the void. on the evolution scale, Live Science quotes the study published in Nature today 12 April.

Teleocrater rhadinus is 2-3 meters long and weighs 9-30kg.(Photo: Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales).

The new study is based on the discovery of at least three samples of T. rhadinus in Tanzania in 2015 in good condition with the ankles and the skull parts of the animal.

Many researchers have speculated that this creature will be a dinosaur-like, two-legged species."One of the surprises is that its ankles look more like a crocodile than a dinosaur or bird," Sterling Nesbitt, assistant professor of geology science at Virginia Tech University. , America, the head of research, said.

T. rhadinus was first discovered by Tanzanian paleontologist F. Rex Parrington in Tanzania in 1933. In the 1950s, Alan Charig, a former officer in charge of reptile, amphibian and bird fossils at the History Museum Naturally London, studied and named this species T. rhadinus but did not publish the study.

T. rhadinus is not the direct ancestor of the dinosaurs but is the earliest dinosaur relative known to the science of evolution. The first dinosaur known to science appeared about 231 million years ago.