©Natural History Museum, London/Mark Witton Artist rendering of Nyasasaurus parringtoni, either the earliest dinosaur or the closest dinosaur relative yet discovered. Nyasasaurus parringtoni was up to 10 feet long, weighed perhaps 135 pounds and is depicted near plant-eating reptiles of the genus Stenaulorhynchus.
Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs like the small, swift-footed Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus. The findings mean that the dinosaur lineage appeared 10 million to 15 million years earlier than fossils previously showed, originating in the Middle Triassic rather than in the Late Triassic period. "If the newly named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far,” according to Sterling Nesbitt , a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in biology and lead author of a paper published online Dec. 5 in Biology Letters , a journal of the United Kingdom's Royal Society. "For 150 years, people have been suggesting that there should be Middle Triassic dinosaurs, but all the evidence is ambiguous,” he said. "Some scientists used fossilized footprints, but we now know that other animals from that time have a very similar foot. Other scientists pointed to a single dinosaur-like characteristic in a single bone, but that can be misleading because some characteristics evolved in a number of reptile groups and are not a result of a shared ancestry.
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