Paleontologists have discovered a direct human ancestor the size of an elephant
Scientists discovered on the territory of Poland the remains of dicynodont, which is the oldest direct ancestor of humans and other mammals.
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It turned out that these animals the size is not inferior to elephants and dinosaurs.
According to Tomasz Suleja (Tomasz Sulej) from the paleontological Institute PAN in Warsaw, the discovery is a “landmark discovery that happens once in a lifetime”.
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“Detection “lisovichi” radically changes our understanding of the evolutionary history of the late dicynodonts, the closest relatives of the mammals in the Triassic time period,” he told the journal Science. The researcher added that now paleontologists are trying to understand what made these ancient animals to reach the same gigantic proportions as the dinosaurs.
Many scientists believe that the first primitive representatives of our class was characterized by small sizes and weight. Judging by the structure of their teeth, they eat monotonous food, mostly insects.
Boom the evolution of our ancient ancestors began only after the dinosaurs became extinct, not allowing them to occupy new ecological niches.News
Suleyman and his colleague Grzegorz Nedzvedski (Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki), conducting excavations near the Polish village of Lisowice, proved that it was not so.
Over the past decade paleontologists have found in Lisowice over a thousand bones and other fossils, most of which belonged to primitive dinosaurs, crocodiles, and various small relatives of ancient mammals.
On 2 November it was reported that American scientists-paleontologists have discovered that the first colored eggs began to save the dinosaurs, birds just inherited their this property.