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Scientists were stunned to discover that a giant herbivore, who lived in the Triassic times, is a parent of mammals. The creature named Lisowicia bojani lived with long necked dinosaurs at the time. ( Pixabay | Simon Bardet )
Scientists have recently discovered the remains of a mammal parent the size of an elephant, who had the features of a rhinoceros and a turtle. This species has survived on plants more than 200 million years ago.
A study published in the journal Science highlights the age of the dinosaurs and challenges the idea that only these gigantic creatures were the only herbivores of ancient times. She introduced the mammalian cousin Lisowicia bojani, named Lisowice, the Polish city where the remains were found.
The paleontologist Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, co-author of the study, is one of those who admitted that his presumptions about creatures living during the period triassic were false. Like other experts, he thought that only the dinosaurs had reached a huge size and that the mammals "were retreating in the shade".
Stephen Brusatte, paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, echoed the same sentiment. He said that it was also what he had taught his students. He also broke the first accounts that there were no mammals present at the same time with long-necked dinosaurs.
dicynodont
The creature belongs to the group of dicynodonts, which means "two dog teeth", based on their canine-like tusks. They are herbivore in nature and most of them are toothless. They were seen as dead when the dinosaurs became supreme, although the latest discovery canceled this idea.
The L. bojani fossil was estimated at 2.6 meters tall and 4.5 meters long or 40% larger than the last discovered dicynodont. This shows that he had a body like a rhinoceros, a beak like a turtle and the size of an elephant, weighing about 8,000 kilograms. Initially, researchers thought that the creature belonged to the sauropods because of its size, told by the paleontologist Tomasz Sulej of the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, author of the study.
Evolution
The discovery of L. bojani gives an idea of how the situation of dicynodonts has become a factor in the evolution of creatures over time. In particular, researchers are extremely interested in how the environment has grown to their gigantism.
Newly discovered bones of this species showed signs of rapid growth. The researchers speculated that the creature might have grown to avoid being prey to much larger animals.
"Great dicynodonts were known in both the Permian and the Triassic, but never on this scale," said expert Christian Kammerer of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
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