SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Missing Link Dinosaur Discovered
from BBC News Online
Researchers have discovered a fossil skeleton that appears to link the earliest dinosaurs with the large plant-eating sauropods. This could help to bridge an evolutionary gap between the two-legged common ancestors of dinosaurs and the four-legged giants, such as diplodocus.
The remarkably complete skeleton shows that the creature was bipedal but occasionally walked on all four legs. The team reports its discovery in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.
"What we have is a big, short-footed, barrel-chested, long-necked, small-headed dinosaur," explained Adam Yates, the scientist from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the research.
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