{"id":813034,"date":"2026-10-25T03:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T03:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/813034\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T03:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T03:02:10","slug":"early-predatory-dinosaurs-survived-shift-in-their-ecosystem-fossil-fragment-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/813034\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Predatory Dinosaurs Survived Shift in Their Ecosystem, Fossil Fragment Suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"

A single bone from southern Brazil indicates that herrerasaurids, among the first large meat-eating dinosaurs, persisted after the fauna around them changed.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

An artistic representation of the CAPPA\/UFSM 0539 herrerasaurid dinosaur in life. Image credit: Johnny Pauly V. Mingau.<\/p>\n

Herrerasaurid dinosaurs lived during the Carnian age of the Late Triassic epoch, roughly 230 million years ago.<\/p>\n

They were bipedal hunters with serrated teeth and large claws on their hands, and some grew longer than 5 m (16 feet).<\/p>\n

The group is known only from South America, from fossils found in Argentina and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Until now, herrerasaurids in both countries had come only from rock layers dominated by rhynchosaurs<\/a>, stocky plant-eating reptiles.<\/p>\n

Younger layers, where a pig-sized cynodont relative of mammals called Exaeretodon<\/a> became more abundant and rhynchosaurs declined, had produced none.<\/p>\n

The absence raised the possibility that herrerasaurids died out when the fauna shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe absence of herrerasaurid records from strata characterized by abundance of Exaeretodon could reflect faunal changes that ultimately prevented the persistence of the group,\u201d said Dr. Rodrigo Temp M\u00fcller, a paleontologist at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, if herrerasaurids were ecologically specialized for preying upon rhynchosaurs, the decline of these herbivores may have negatively affected their survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, although rhynchosaurs become less abundant in these younger assemblages, they are not absent from the fauna.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConsequently, this alone may not adequately explain the apparent absence of herrerasaurids from these deposits.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the study, Dr. M\u00fcller examined a fragment of a herrerasaurid pubis (hip bone) that was collected at a site near the town of Agudo in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.<\/p>\n

Catalogued as CAPPA\/UFSM 0539, the fossil is the first herrerasaurid record from rock layers where Exaeretodon is abundant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe specimen was collected from the V\u00e1rzea do Agudo site, located in the municipality of Agudo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,\u201d Dr. M\u00fcller said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fossil-bearing strata at this site belong to the Santa Maria Formation, Paran\u00e1 Basin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author suggests that herrerasaurids were adaptable enough to survive in changed ecosystems, and that they may have been the top predators at the site.<\/p>\n

He also raises the possibility that this is the youngest herrerasaurid known, but only if the Brazilian rocks are younger than other herrerasaurid-bearing layers, as they are in Argentina.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolute dating of the Brazilian strata remains essential to establish a more reliable chronological framework for the different Triassic fossil-bearing localities,\u201d the researcher said.<\/p>\n

The study<\/a> was published on October 19, 2026 in The Science of Nature.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

R.T. M\u00fcller. 2026. First occurrence of a herrerasaurid dinosaur in a traversodontid cynodont-dominated Late Triassic fauna of southern Brazil. Sci Nat 113, 133; doi: 10.1007\/s00114-026-02185-1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A single bone from southern Brazil indicates that herrerasaurids, among the first large meat-eating dinosaurs, persisted after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50533,9548,266799,266800,2927,266801,2928,59,266802,266803,266804,266805,266806,266807,90,19479,88513,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-813034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-apex-predator","tag-brazil","tag-cynodont","tag-cynodontia","tag-dinosaur","tag-exaeretodon","tag-fossil","tag-gb","tag-herrerasauridae","tag-pubis","tag-rhynchosaur","tag-rhynchosauria","tag-rhynchosauridae","tag-santa-maria-formation","tag-science","tag-south-america","tag-triassic","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}