Research led by China's Capital Normal University found that the Mireosaurus, which lived 150 million years ago, had teeth when it hatched. Researchers said in a report published in the professional journal "Current Biology" that as the young dragons grew, they may have switched from carnivorous to herbivorous, and the teeth that were convenient for eating meat were replaced by beaks that were easy to eat plants. This has never been seen in other studies of reptiles or dinosaurs. Until about 10 years ago, the fossil of "Escape from the Mireosaurus" was unearthed in Wucaiwan, Xinjiang.
The adults and young dragons who could not escape the mire dragon were almost divided into two different dinosaurs
Wang Shuo, who led the research, said that they originally thought they had discovered fossils of two different dinosaurs, with and without teeth, and had even begun to classify them separately. But researchers gradually discovered that apart from the differences in teeth, the two dinosaurs were very similar in other features.
Later, their research concluded that Mireosaurus gradually lost its teeth as it grew, and Mireosaurus became the only reptile known to have such a change. Among the remaining creatures, only the platypus may have similar growth characteristics, and the Mireosaurus is a theropod dinosaur that belongs to the same order as Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
The discovery may help explain or hold the key to unraveling the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.
animal tags：
you may also like
About 208 million years ago, a global catastrophe wiped out many species of animals. This marks the end of the Triassic Period and the beginning of the Jurassic Period. What caused this catastrophe? Scientists have proposed several explanations. Maybe, because a huge aste...
The world's first pterosaur egg and embryo fossil was discovered in the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota in western Liaoning, my country, about 121 million years ago. It is also one of the three pterosaur eggs that have been discovered in the world. Since the discovery of pterosaur fossils 220 ye...
Through the research of archaeologists, we can know that dinosaurs lived in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. These three periods added up to a total of about 160 million years, which means that dinosaurs once ruled the earth for 160 million years. Hundreds of millions of years a...
Dinosaurs were a group of reptiles that dominated land for more than 140 million years (more than 160 million years in some parts of the world). They evolved in different shapes and sizes, from the terrifying giant Spinosaurus to the chicken-sized Microraptor, and were able to survive in a va...
The earliest hypothesis about dinosaur mating positions was proposed by a scholar named Halstead in 1975. However, due to his understanding at the time, he believed that dinosaurs, like birds, did not have penises and adopted cloacal kissing. He proposed that the male dinosaur would wrap its...
The excavation of Yellow River Dragon began in 2002 and lasted for three years. The fossils include: a nearly complete sacral vertebra, a front caudal vertebra, a middle caudal vertebra, several incomplete cervical ribs, and a missing distal vein arc. Left scapula and coracoid. It belongs to...
Dinosaurs that walked on four legs were mostly herbivorous dinosaurs that walked on four legs, like many animals today. Next, let’s take a look at the dinosaurs that walked on four legs with this theme group! 1. Riojalon Oharosaurids were the only species livin...
Early paleontologists believed that dinosaurs were a class of reptiles of their own, so they were unified into the "order Dinosaurs". Later, as scientists learned more about these animals, they discovered that they actually included two different orders of reptiles, namelySaurischians (common...
Email: jsset#163.com (change # to @) Please indicate your purpose of visit! Guangdong ICP No. 2022053326 XML| map| Chinese
