Dinosaurs Evolved in a Hurry
Dinosaurs may have evolved from their immediate ancestors, the dinosauromorphs, in just a few million years.
New dating suggests dinosaurs evolved from ancestors quickly
Dinosaurs exploded on the evolutionary scene, evolving from their more lizard-like ancestors in roughly one-third of the amount of time that had been previously thought.
Dr. Randall Irmis, Curator of Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah and Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, and his colleagues, used a new and precise dating method to look at the age of rocks in which the immediate ancestors of dinosaurs - the dinosauromorphs - were preserved.
They found that these rocks were actually about ten million years younger than had been thought, which meant that the gaps between the dinosauromorphs and the dinosaurs was only a few million years - an eyeblink in evolutionary time.
Related Links
- Paper in PNAS
- University of Utah release
- ABC science story
- Scientific American story