Transitional Dinosaur Species Discovered

Transitional Dinosaur species Discovered

Nature magazine has reported this week that scientists have discovered a mass graveyard of a bird-like dinosaur in the Utah in United States. Scientists believe that this species was in the process of converting from a bloodthirsty diet to a vegetarian one. They have named this species: Falcarius utahensis and as per the reports, it lived on the planet earth about 125 million years ago.

The time period of their existence kind of fills the missing link in the evolution of the dinosaurs on the planet. Scott Sampson, of the Utah Museum of Natural History had this to say about the new findings: “Falcarius represents evolution caught in the act, a primitive form that shares much in common with its carnivorous kin, while possessing a variety of features demonstrating that it had embarked on the path toward more advanced plant-eating forms.”

James Kirkland, of the Utah Geological Survey adds to the findings: “Falcarius shows the beginning of features we associate with plant-eating dinosaurs, including a reduction in size of meat-cutting teeth to leaf-shredding teeth, the expansion of the gut to a size needed to ferment plants and the early stages of changing the legs so they could carry a bulky body instead of running fast after prey.”

Scientists though have no clue what this transitional species ate. They suggest that the dino might have eaten a bit of meat as well considering the evolution of flowering plants coincided with its appearance on the planet.