Back at the dawn of the dinosaur era, a quick-moving predator set the stage for the famous and fearsome giants that followed in its footsteps, according to new research.
“It was a little dinosaur, but it carried a big evolutionary stick,” said Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, a leader of the team that discovered Eodromaeus.
The 4-foot-long hunter lived 230 million years ago in what is now South America and appears to be the ancestor of such creatures as Tyrannosaurus rex.
“It is stunning,” Sereno said of the find, reported in today’s edition of the journal Science.
Its features, such as a balancing tail and air pockets in the skull, show it was closely related to T. rex, he said.
But while it stood on two feet like T. rex, Eodromaeus was a lightweight at just 10 to 15 pounds. The Associated Press
