A new study challenges our understanding of when dinosaurs first appeared on Earth. By analyzing fossils, evolutionary trees, and ancient geography, researchers suggest that the earliest dinosaurs likely emerged in the equatorial regions of ancient Earth—areas that today include the Amazon rainforest, Congo basin, and Sahara Desert. This finding contradicts previous assumptions that dinosaurs evolved in more temperate environments like the Laurasia supercontinent, which is now home to parts of Europe, Asia, and North America.
The study highlights gaps in the fossil record, which makes it difficult to confirm whether dinosaurs existed in these regions before their fossils were discovered. Researchers propose that areas with missing fossils are simply understudied or not yet uncovered by paleontologists. By using advanced modeling techniques, they explain how ancient ecosystems could have supported the evolution of early dinosaurs.
One key finding is that silesaurids, traditionally considered distant cousins of dinosaurs, may have been their closest relatives. This discovery helps fill gaps in evolutionary trees and offers new insights into how dinosaurs diversified over time. The study also reveals that certain dinosaur groups, like sauropods (plant-eaters such as Brontosaurus), adapted to warm climates by staying in lower latitudes, while theropods (including T. rex) and ornithischians (groups resembling modern birds) developed body heat generation to expand into colder regions later in Earth’s history.
Despite these groundbreaking findings, direct fossil evidence of the earliest dinosaurs in the Amazon or Saharan regions remains absent. Future expeditions focused on these understudied areas could provide critical clues about how dinosaurs first colonized our planet and set the stage for the complex ecosystems we see today. The study underscores the importance of exploring new frontiers in fossil research, as many chapters of dinosaur evolution are still waiting to be uncovered.
Source: https://www.earth.com/news/where-did-dinosaurs-come-from-missing-fossils-hold-the-secret