This is the first dinosaur feature article, and there will be a series of articles in the future, if you think it is well written, you can pay attention to me.
Dinosaurs have lived on Earth for about 180 million years, and before that, no species has ever been able to show such a powerful dominance on Earth, and there is no doubt that dinosaurs were the deserved overlords of the earth in that era.
But when exactly did dinosaurs appear? Why are they able to show such adaptability? And why did it suddenly disappear 65 million years ago? We try to peek through the cracks in the door of time.
This group of species is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating creatures in the history of the planet.
The movie "Jurassic World" uses the most direct visual impact to let us experience the fear that this prehistoric creature can bring, but like Ye Gonghaolong, this has fascinated more people.
Identifying the first dinosaurs is very difficult, even though they have left their own unique traces on Earth's timeline – fossils. But even if we find one of the oldest fossils with dinosaur features, it's hard to say it's the earliest dinosaur.
But on macroscopic timescales, we can probably determine when dinosaurs first appeared.
So what is the earliest dinosaur fossil found so far?
At the beginning of the Mesozoic Era (252 million years ago to 66 million years ago), Earth experienced one of the worst extinction events on record and to date. That was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, when 90%-96% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life suffered extinction.
Fossils of marine life caused by the mass extinction
We don't know how the ancestors of the dinosaurs managed to escape the mass extinction, because they didn't have a strong survival advantage at the time, so most paleontologists think they just had a good luck.
243 million years ago, Nyasaron appeared. Some people think that it is the earliest dinosaur, because its form is very close to that of dinosaurs. Paleontologists have studied the fossils, and the bones that bulge at the edge of the upper arm are characteristic of dinosaurs, and the upper arm bone has grown rapidly during development, which is also a typical feature of dinosaurs.
Restoration of Nyasasaurus
Although there is a body of evidence that Nyasaurus is likely to be the earliest dinosaur, some paleontologists are "cautious" to say that the current evidence does not confirm that Nyasaurus is a dinosaur because the fossils of the upper arm bone are incomplete.
Whether or not it really was the earliest dinosaur, at least one thing we can be sure of is that it was at least a close relative of the dinosaur, and we can assume that 243 million years ago this time was very close to the time of the emergence of dinosaurs.
Nyasaurus lived in Africa at the time, reaching 2 to 3 meters in length and weighing 20-60 kilograms, which was lighter than humans, and it was a herbivorous dinosaur.
To better understand this creature, we can look at the biosphere of the Earth at that time.
The Triassic Earth Plate, today's African Plate is in the middle
What was the largest animal on Earth 243 million years ago?
In the middle of the Triassic, when the Earth had just recovered from the mass extinction event at the end of the Permian, the largest creature in the ocean at that time was probably the Zhang's phantom fish, which was a creature of the finosaur family, which reached a length of up to 7 meters, and was the top predator in the ocean at that time. Incidentally, fossils of this organism were found in the Luoping biota in Yunnan, China.
Restoration of the Nothosaurus zhang
At that time, the dominant body on land belonged to the red crocodile, which belonged to the main dragon-shaped basal group, and the red crocodile found in South Africa was up to 3-5 meters long, which can be said to be the top predator on land at that time.
Red crocodiles (Erythrosuchus) compared to humans
Just after the mass extinction at the end of the Permian, the organisms at this time are generally small, and in the future, there will be real giants on the earth, but at this time they are still like many other species, "unknown" in the biosphere.
It will be another 50 million years before they become the true masters of the earth, until they became extinct 65 million years ago, how this species was naturally selected to appear in all corners of the earth, and how it disappeared in a short period of time, and from then on to extinction, let's embark on a journey with this topic to see the evolution of the most fascinating prehistoric creatures - dinosaurs. Move your fingers and pay attention to me!