Sentences with phrase «early ornithischians»

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

Not exact matches

Instead, researchers placed theropods with ornithischians, forming a group called Ornithoscelida, and put sauropodomorphs with the early and primitive herrerasaurs.

It shuffled the three big groups around, putting ornithischians and theropods together into a new group and suggesting that sauropods had split off earlier.

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.