Sentences with phrase «ornithischian dinosaurs»

A second line of so - called bird - hipped, or ornithischian dinosaurs, led to a widely differing group of animals that included the stegosaurs and duckbilled dinosaurs.

We knew that some of the plant - eating ornithischian dinosaurs had simple bristles, and we couldn't be sure whether these were the same kinds of structures as bird and theropod feathers.

«Ornithischian dinosaurs were all herbivores,» explains Persons.

Not exact matches

This new analysis of dinosaurs and their near relatives, published today in the journal Nature, concludes that the ornithischians need to be grouped with the theropods, to the exclusion of the sauropodomorphs.

«The carnivorous theropods were more closely related to the herbivorous ornithischians and, what's more, some animals, such as Diplodocus, would fall outside the traditional grouping that we called dinosaurs.

However, the re-grouping of dinosaurs proposed in this study shows that both ornithischians AND theropods had the potential to evolve a bird - like hip arrangement - they just did so at different times in their history.

Despite having a beak and being an ornithischian, or «bird - hipped» dinosaur, the animal isn't closely related to the lineage that evolved into birds.

«This research provides the clearest evidence to date that feathers were present within the ornithischian half of the dinosaur family tree,» says Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada.

The dinosaur, first described in 2015 as a bizarre, herbivorous theropod, is actually a primitive ornithischian, according to the study — a placement that would strengthen the authors» argument for rewriting the entire family tree.

The dinosaur family tree has three main branches: herbivorous ornithischians, long - necked sauropods and fierce theropods.

If these bristly structures represented early feathers, as researchers have increasingly come to think, it would mean that feathers evolved in dinosaurs that preceded the evolutionary split between so - called saurischians (which include the meat - eating species) and ornithischians (which comprise plant - eating species) more than 200 million years ago.

However, when Baron studied the few specimens available from the earliest dinosaurs, he found that early ornithischians oddly resembled theropods.

Harry Seeley, a British paleontologist, first proposed the split of saurischians and ornithischians back in 1887, with the classifications based on the shape of the hips of the dinosaurs.

In Baron's redrawn dinosaur family tree, the saurischians now only include the sauropodomorphs, and the theropods were grouped with ornithischians to form a new classification named ornithoscelidans.

Since 1887, dinosaurs have been divided into two major groups, namely the lizard - hipped saurischians and the bird - hipped ornithischians.

Meanwhile, falling under ornithischians are horned dinosaurs such as the Triceratops and armored dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus.

Their analysis resulted in moving theropods from Saurischia and into a class of bird - limbed dinosaurs now known as Ornithoscelida (which formerly contained ornithischians like Triceratops).

Chilesaurus gave the scientists evidence to rethink dinosaur classification, providing a link between theropods and ornithischians.

«We had absolutely no idea how the ornithischian body plan started to develop because they look so different to all the other dinosaurs.