Emily Chan
A 237-million-year-old fossil the size of a small dog was found in Brazil, and it might be a precursor to the dinosaur. It is one of the oldest fossils ever uncovered in South America and even the world.
Researchers discovered that it belonged to an extinct group of Triassic reptiles that were closely related to dinosaurs. During the Triassic period, a variety of animals emerged, such as dinosaurs and mammals.
In 2015, a paleontologist named Rodrigo Temp Muller from the Federal University of Santa Maria found the fossil near the town of Paraíso do Sul, located in the southern part of Brazil. However, Muller and his colleagues only began studying it recently.
The creature lived about 237 million years ago during the Middle-Upper Triassic. It was not exactly a dinosaur.
Instead, it was a member of a sister group known as Silesauridae. This group shared many characteristics with dinosaurs. Most silesaurids had four legs, long necks, and short tails.
Evidence suggests that some of them occasionally walked upright. They existed for 30 million years and may have been a precursor to bird-line archosaurs, which are the ancestors of modern-day birds and crocodiles. For context, Homo sapiens first appeared approximately 300,000 years ago.
The fossil contained most of the skeletal parts of the ancient creature, which was enough to allow the researchers to determine it was a distinct species. Muller has named it Gondwanax paraisensis.
The word “Gondwana” refers to the supercontinent that existed before it separated into the several smaller landmasses we live on today. Meanwhile, “paraisensis” was coined in honor of the town’s name.
The creature weighed around 10 pounds. It had some unique anatomical features that could lead to new insights into dinosaur evolution.
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