Fossil of Creature that Lived Before the Dinosaurs Unearthed In Brazil

Amaze Lab

We all know about the dinosaurs, but what came before? The Venetoraptor Gassenae family of creatures isn’t well understood, but experts say that this find could change all of that.

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00:00 These are the fossils recently found in Brazil.

00:06 And while they're not that large or impressive as far as dinosaur bones go, their scientific

00:10 importance is gargantuan.

00:12 That's because they belong to what's called Venatoraptor gassini, which isn't a dinosaur

00:16 at all.

00:17 Venatoraptors are actually part of a phylum of creatures that came before the dinosaurs.

00:21 And pterosaurs, called Lagerpetid archosaurs, they lived on Earth in the late Triassic period.

00:26 And they're giving scientists a look at what the dinosaurs' ancestors looked like.

00:30 This is Rodrigo Temp-Muller, a paleontologist with the Santa Maria Federal University in

00:35 Brazil.

00:36 He says that very little is known about this creature, which lived some 230 million years

00:40 ago, and that this discovery has finally revealed what their faces likely looked like.

00:45 But the paleontologist adding that the degree and morphological variation of these precursors

00:49 of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs was much greater than they had imagined.

00:53 However, that very morphology is showing a clear connection to the morphology of the

00:57 pterosaur family specifically.

00:59 The creature was only around 3.2 feet long.

01:01 However, paleontologists believe it will be key in better understanding prehistoric species

01:07 and their evolution.

01:08 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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