Early dino was turkey-sized, social plant-eater: study [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Early dino was turkey-sized, social plant-eater: study
August 06, 2014 - Updated 536 PKT
From Web Edition

PARIS: The forerunner of dinosaurs like three-horned Triceratops was a bird-hipped creature the size of a turkey that lived in herds in South America and liked to munch on ferns, scientists said Wednesday.


Laquintasaura venezuelae, named after the country in which it was discovered, lived 201 million years ago in the earliest Jurassic period, soon after a major extinction at the end of the Triassic, said a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The early history of bird-hipped, beaked, plant-eating dinosaurs called Ornithischia, of which the newly-discovered lizard is a very old example, has thus far been sketchy, as so few have been found.

Ornithischia gave rise to famous beasts like Iguanodon, Stegosaurus and Triceratops, which have inspired childrens´ toys and cartoons.

The discovery of the remains of at least four Laquintasaura in Venezuela showed that dinosaurs bounced back quickly after the Triassic species wipeout, said study author Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

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