Meet Tawa hallae

New Dino

Tawa hallae, a new species of dinosaur discovered in New Mexico, is one of our earlier examples of dinosaurs, at seventeen million years after the earliest known, and is indeed one of the ancestors of the terrible lizard itself, Tyrannosaurus rex.

Most interestingly, it appears to have some hollow bones, a feature shared by dinosaurs’ living descendants, the Aves clade (in other words, birds). This is evidently a relatively big find, filling some of the blanks in the predicted evolution of dinosaurs and subsequently birds. The find also helps detail early migration patterns from Pangaea.

This dinosaur contains characteristics of several lineages that can help in understanding evolution of the various forms of dinosaurs, the scientists said.

It developed on the supercontinent Pangea, in which creatures could move from region to region before Pangea broke apart into the current continents.

Nesbitt added that the find may reinforce the idea that dinosaurs originated in what is now South America and then moved on to other regions.

T. hallae is an early form of theropod, from which the well known T. Rex later developed, as did modern birds.

Indeed, the new find had some hollow bones, as modern birds do, though it had other more lizardlike than birdlike characteristics, according to Nesbitt.

The AP article is syndicated at Yahoo News.

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Meet Tawa hallae
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