{"id":5492,"date":"2017-04-18T17:01:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T21:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5492"},"modified":"2017-04-18T17:10:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T21:10:29","slug":"fossil-leads-to-recognition-of-birdlike-reptiles-that-preceded-early-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/fossil-leads-to-recognition-of-birdlike-reptiles-that-preceded-early-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossil leads to recognition of birdlike reptiles that preceded early dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5493\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5493\" class=\"wp-image-5493\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Teleocrater-with-plants-1024x414.jpg\" alt=\"Teleocrater-with-plants-1024x414\" width=\"600\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Teleocrater-with-plants-1024x414.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Teleocrater-with-plants-1024x414-300x121.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5493\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life reconstruction of the new species Teleocrater rhadinus, a close relative of dinosaurs.\u00a0<em>(Image by Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales &#8220;Bernardino Rivadavia&#8221; (Buenos Aires, Argentina), artwork by Gabriel Lio.)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Certain physical traits previously thought to be unique to dinosaurs evolved much earlier, a new study suggests. Fossil analysis of a newly described species, named <em>Teleocrater rhadinus<\/em>, places this carnivorous animal in a new spot on the evolutionary tree, directly after\u00a0the split between birds and crocodilians. <em>Teleocrater<\/em> marks the first of an entirely new clade of reptiles, <em>Aphanosauria,<\/em>\u00a0which\u00a0possesses both transitional physical bird-crocodylian characteristics, such as a crocodilian-like ankle joint, and classic dinosaur features in limb proportion and body size.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sterling J. Nesbitt, Richard J. Butler, Mart\u00edn D. Ezcurra, Paul M. Barrett, Michelle R. Stocker, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith, Christian A. Sidor, Grzegorz Nied\u017awiedzki, Andrey G. Sennikov &amp; Alan J. Charig<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"im\"><strong>Corresponding author: <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"im\">Sterling Nesbitt, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States, Email: <a href=\"mailto:sjn2104@vt.edu\" target=\"_blank\">sjn2104@vt.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/nature22037.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper <\/a>published in<em> Nature<\/em> on April 12, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Certain physical traits previously thought to be unique to dinosaurs evolved much earlier, a new study suggests. Fossil analysis of a newly described species, named Teleocrater rhadinus, places this carnivorous animal in a new spot on the evolutionary tree, directly after\u00a0the split between birds and crocodilians. Teleocrater marks the first of an entirely new clade [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2008,917,1862],"class_list":["post-5492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-dinosaurs","tag-evolution","tag-paleontology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Teleocrater-with-plants-1024x4141-e1492549797140.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1qA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5494,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5492\/revisions\/5494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}