Herrerasaurus

An illustration of an extinct early dinosaur. It's bipedal and resemlbes a theropo, with a rectangular head, small arms, slender legs, and a long counterbalancing tail. It's depicted with a thick coat of speculative protofeather fuzz on its body.

One of the earliest known dinosaurs, Herrerasaurus lived during the Late Triassic (~231 mya) in what is now Argentina, South America. It was a fairly lightly-built bipedal carnivore, with the largest specimens reaching sizes of just over 5m long (16′4″).

The exact classification of herrerasaurids is still somewhat unclear, with different analyses putting them in different positions on the early dinosaurian family tree. They’re generally considered to at least be closely related to basal theropods – but a recent analysis that reshuffles dinosaur relationships suggests their resemblance to the theropods might be a result of convergent evolution, with them being the sister group to sauropods instead.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *