➤ What was the first dinosaur?

The Prehistory It is continually rewritten as a new discovery is made. That is why if the question is what was the first dinosaur?the answer may vary, since there is always the possibility of a new discovery that makes it necessary to reformulate how the various forms of life evolved in our world.

In this article we are going to delve into what the oldest dinosaur could be, and everything that is known about it.

Discovering the first dinosaur

During the last decades there was a consensus that the Eoraptor It was the oldest dinosaur. It was a small creature that was found on a rock in Argentina. It is 231 million years old and until recently it has been named as the oldest known dinosaur.

Eoraptor

But this title no longer belongs to him since a fossil found a couple of decades ago in Tanzania is 10 million years older. It is known as Nyasasaurus parrington.

It is estimated to be 243 million years old, making it the oldest dinosaur known to date. And this has meant that the origin of dinosaurs is now established in the south of what was once the continent of Pangea. We are talking about what is today Africa, South America, Australia and India.

Those responsible for the discovery

This dinosaur was first described by Alan J. Charing in 1950, for which it was a doctoral work. It was named after his supervisor and professor, Francis Rex Parrington. But he never published this work.

Parrington was a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge who also ran its Museum of Zoology. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 2012 Sterling Nesbitt, an American paleontologist, did a work on this dinosaur based on Charing’s work, for which he appears as a co-author in tribute to his work and research.

What was the first dinosaur like?

the fossil of the what would be the first dinosaur found in Tanzania in the vicinity of the Lake Nyasa. Hence its name is also Nyasasarus. What was found was the upper part of his arm and part of his spine.

The discovery was made in 1930, it was studied in detail in the following decades. It is estimated that it measured between 1.9 and 3 meters in height, including its tail, which could measure up to 1.5 meters. That’s why its size was no larger than that of a Labrador Retriever dog.

There was no skull among his remains, so it is impossible to know exactly what he ate. Although many bet that it was omnivorous.

He had a deltopectoral crest which is a bony structure along the upper arm bone that supports the muscles from the shoulder to the arm.

The dinosaurian ancestor

In 2010 Nesbitt, along with a team of collaborators, named an elongated, long-necked creature that dated back to the Triassic in Tanzania. He was called Asilisaurus kongwe. But in this case it was a dinosauriformwhich was an ancestor from which the first dinosaurs would have descended.

Asilisaurus kongwe

This suggested that the dinosaur lineage had probably diverged from a common ancestor at that time. This places its existence at 243 million years ago. In fact, in Santa Cruz de Poland there are footprints that date back 249 million years. This indicated that dinosaurs were diversifying since the beginning of the Triassic.

Specifically, it would occur shortly after the catastrophe that decimated life on the planet at the end of the Permian, 252 million years ago.

About Nyasasaurus parrington

The recognition of Nyasasaurus parrington, which is located at the base of the dinosaur family tree, adds to the evidence that its proliferation occurred following a catastrophic mass extinction.

It is one step closer to the Asilisaurus and finding an animal with such particular features, very similar to those of the dinosaurs in the Triassic, is a sign that those that already existed had a well-established ancestral origin.

Although it is a specimen about which only partial information is available, a right humerus and a collection of vertebrae of two kinds can be distinguished.

The dinosuariform adds to all this a margin of 12 million additional years that paleontologists are beginning to investigate.

Another information that the Nyasasaurus analysis adds is about the rare and fragmentary nature of the remains. These reflect that the first dinosaurs were marginal to the world they inhabited. They didn’t dominate from the beginning.

Were rather small and gentle animals who lived in the world in which the archosaurs whose closest descendants are crocodiles.

At the end of the Triassic and early Jurassic when the archosaur began to disappear, that was when the dinosaurs took over to become dominant.

Other ancient dinosaurs

In addition to the Nyasasaurus Parrington there are other ancient dinosaurs, which are only slightly younger by a few tens of millions of years.

Some are the following:

Chindesaurus

In this case we are talking about a specimen of about 230 to 210 million years old, which is estimated to have lived in the last phase of the Triassic. It was found in the Southeastern United States and is known to have been carnivorous.

It belongs to the group of Herrerasaurids, and it was small in size. It could have measured 2 to 2.3 meters in length, and was bipedal. It was discovered in 1984 and the first skeleton found was named Gertie in honor of the first animated dinosaur character.

Six specimens are known of Chinderosaurus that are incomplete. It owes its name to the ChindePoint lizard, which comes from the Navajo chindi meaning ghost either spirit evil one. For your part saurius in Latin and means lizard.

Stauricosaurus

This is a dinosaur that was found in Brazil and belonged to the Late Triassic. It dates back 233 million years and was carnivorous. It is another Herrerasaurids and its scientific name is Staurikosaurus. It comes from the Santa María Formation of the Paleorrota Geopark.

It was a small animal about 2.25 meters long, 80 centimeters high, weighing about 30 kilos. The stauriosaurs found are incomplete and only parts such as their spine, lower jaw and legs are available.

However, it has a very good reconstruction given that it was a primitive dinosaur. The fact that its legs are known indicates that it was a great runner and a very good predator.

Saturnalia tupiniquim

It was a primitive dinosaur, a mix of sauropod and theropod. Its classification was always under scrutiny, until scientists placed it within the Sauropodomorphs. It was about 1.5 meters long and was carnivorous.

It dates back 233.23 million years and was developed in the last phase of the Triassic. The first were discovered in Brazil and Zimbabwe.

He had a body similar to that of sauropods, with a neck a little longer than that of primitive dinosaurs, as expected of this group. Most were also found in the Paleorrota Geopark and one femur was found in Zimbabwe. This shows that Africa and South America were once connected.

Herreasaurus ischigualastensis

The first discovery of his remains was in 1959 in Northwestern Argentina. During the following years, only fragments were found, which made their classification difficult. Scientists were not sure whether it was a primitive theropod or a primitive sauropodomorph.

Finally in 1998 they found a very complete skeleton, so it is believed that the Herrerasaurus is a primitive Theropoda, which They are the direct ancestors of the birds we know today.

Its antiquity dates back to 231.4 million years and it is known that it was carnivorous. It was 6 meters long and could weigh 350 kg. Due to their early appearance in the genealogy they differ from their descendants in the shape of their hip and leg bones.