Earliest known dinosaur discovered

[dipsydoodle]

(Reuters) - Researchers have found what could be the earliest known dinosaur to walk the Earth lurking in the corridors of London's Natural History Museum.

A mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum's collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from a dinosaur that lived about 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years earlier than any previously discovered examples.

The creature was about the size of a Labrador dog and has been named Nyasasaurus parringtoni after southern Africa's Lake Nyasa, today called Lake Malawi, and Cambridge University's Rex Parrington, who collected the specimen at a site near the lake in the 1930s.

"It was a case of looking at the material with a fresh pair of eyes," Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, who worked on the study, told Reuters. "This closes a gap in the fossil record and pushes back the existence of dinosaurs."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/05/us-science-dinosaur-idUKBRE8B400B20121205

[Motown_Johnny]

1. Nyasasaurus Rex wasn't an option?

Seems silly to me.

Still, very cool story. Thanks for posting.

[skydive forever]

2. Earliest known dinosaur discovered

I was expecting one that was 5999 years old. How could there be anything older?

[Victor_c3]

3. you beat me to it

You can tell that this is junk science. Everyone with a brain knows that the earth was created 6000 years ago

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. I honestly thought you going to post a pic of Mitch McConnell

[eppur_se_muova]

5. No wonder they took so long to identify it ...

the fossil contained no traces of saddle or bridle.

[Odin2005]

6. Wow, that's only 7 million years after the Permian Extinction.

All the earliest dinos seem to be from what was West Gondwana, basically South America and Africa. This seems to indicate that dinosaurs first evolved there.