Dinosaurs Are Older Than We Thought

A new find in Tanzania is pushing back the origins of dinosaurs at least ten million years.

The Asilisaurus kongwe, which NationalGeographic describes as a "Labrador retriever-size creature [was] a silesaur, the closest relatives to true dinosaurs. The new found animal lived 243 million years ago, during the middle Triassic period."

The importance of this discovery can be summed up by saying that while it was assumed that silesaurs and true-dinosaurs were co-habiting in overlapping eras -- since they originated from a common ancestor -- that there was no actual evidence to support this, since the oldest true-dino we previously had was just 230 million years old.

NationalGeo goes on to say that the Asilisaurus's age suggests that some early forms of dinosaurs must have also been plodding around in the middle Triassic. (See a prehistoric time line.) (Previously dino's are placed in the late Triassic.)

Now the Asukusaurus that was pieced together came from 12-plus different skeletons. And the interesting thing was that the critter that came out of the puzzle pieces was nothing like archeologists were expecting.

Instead of resembling the "typical hatchet-headed, blade-toothed meat-eaters," Asilisaurus was a light, slender-limbed animal with peg-like teeth and a small beak-like structure on its jaw, the University of Maryland's Holtz said.

The shape of the beak suggests Asilisaurus tore into tissue, which means the animal might have eaten plants—or both plants and meat, the researchers say.

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