Dinosaur ancestor discovered in Tanzania by Zuzana Zelenakova

Asilisaurus kongwe is the name of the oldest ancestor to the dinosaurs that lived 10 million years ahead of their time. It shares many characteristics with dinosaurs, however, it does not belong to the dinosaur family directly. Based on this discovery, scientists came to a conclusion that dinosaurs and animals of the similar kind might have lived much earlier than previously thought. The oldest dinosaurs discovered so far were 230 million years old. Asilisaurus belongs to the group known as silesaurs, which is very close to dinosaurs. "When people think about dinosaurs, we think about the extreme forms, the ones that have gone off in their ... own weird directions," such a! s Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, said Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., paleontologist from the University of Maryland, who did not participated in the research. "But they all came from a common ancestor, and fellows like Asilisaurus help us understand what that original dino state looked like." Fossil bones of at least 14 Asilisaurus individuals were found in southern Tanzania and were sufficient to reconstruct almost whole skeleton. Asilisaurus kongwe individuals found in Tanzania were about 0.5 to 1 meter tall at the hips and were 1 to 3 meters long and weighed about 10 to 30 kilograms. The first member of the silesaur group was found back in 2003. "This goes to show that there are whole groups of animals out there that we've never even found evidence of that were very abundant during the Triassic," said Sterling Nesbitt, a geoscientist from the University of Texas in Austin, who led the team of excavators. "It's exciting because it means there is still so much chance for disco! very." The name Asilisaurus kongwe is derived from Swahili and! Greek. Asili means ancestor in Swahili, sauros is Greek for lizard and kongwe is Swahili for ancient.

related story (sgx16677): http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100304/ts_afp/sciencepalaeonto...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

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