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Majestic Dinosaurs

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The title of the article I chose is Paleontologists probe the majestic reptiles' origin and rise writen by Alenxandra Witze. This article talks about paleontologists excavating ancient fossils, giving them more information about the common ancestor of dinosaurs, and how they came to rule the earth for millions of years. The author gives us an example of what the ancestor of dinosaurs may have looked like, by telling us that it “probably looked something like a chicken”. Just as there was a mass extinction that wiped out most dinosaurs, there was a mass extinction millions years before, that gave the dinosaurs an opportunity to rise and evolve. 252 millions years ago, between the Permian and Triassic periods a mass extinction wiped out most life on Earth. This gave the opportunity for new groups to …show more content…

The oldest piece of evidence showing that the first dinosaurs showed up during the Triassic time period, are the fossil footprints found that date back 250 million years, although not everyone is convinced that the footprints are definite evidence. Scientists are not sure how to classify some of the earliest species found between the three main branches of the dinosaur family tree: Theropods( two-legged meat eaters), Sauropodomorphs(four-legged, long neck plant eaters), and Ornithiscians ( “bird hipped” dinosaurs). Although these fossils help paleontologists discover new information, new findings also come from close relatives of dinosaurs, just like “a long talk with an estranged cousin can help fill in family history, these discoveries are illuminating how dinosaurs evolved alongside other animals”. One of the relatives that helped with this process are the silesaurids. Their bones help illuminate crucial differences between dinosaurs and their relatives deep in the

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