Oldest Dinosaur Ever! (Maybe)

[ZoPteryx]

Pretty cool find!   Who knows what's lurking in other museum drawers.

http://news.yahoo.com/earliest-known-dinosaur-discovered-000536001.html

[Takama]

I guess Eoraptor is dethroned then

[Balaur]

Wow! Amazing! 

[Splonkadumpocus]

And just when we thought we could safely say dinosaurs originated in South America, too. Oh well, if East Africa is good enough for us it's good enough for dinosaurs too.

Also, since the definition of Dinosauria is either Triceratops + Aves or Megalosaurus + Iguanodon, Nyasasaurus would by definition need to be within Saurischia or Ornithischia or it's a basal dinosauriform instead. I wonder which one it is.

[Jetoar]

In two diffrent museums  but the problem have finished  .

[ZoPteryx]

As always, it seems Wikipedia has the most info on strange prehistoric critters, and a cool chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyasasaurus

Also, since the definition of Dinosauria is either Triceratops + Aves or Megalosaurus + Iguanodon, Nyasasaurus would by definition need to be within Saurischia or Ornithischia or it's a basal dinosauriform instead. I wonder which one it is.

Well, both definitions also say "and their last common ancestor", so maybe this is it.

[wings]

... Also, since the definition of Dinosauria is either Triceratops + Aves or Megalosaurus + Iguanodon, Nyasasaurus would by definition need to be within Saurischia or Ornithischia or it's a basal dinosauriform instead. I wonder which one it is.

This is the actual paper of the animal (http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/1/20120949.full.pdf). Basically we didn't have enough to tell whether this animal is sitting within the Dinosauria as one of the earliest member or just outside of it. The timing seems really close to the base of dinosauria and also its location is the same as Asilisaurus's (which is considered one of closes Dinosauriformes to the Dinosauria group). The characteristics that unites Nyasasaurus as an "early dinosaur" are the shape of the deltoid crest on the upper arm, three sacral vertebrae, and the cavities on the side of the neck vertebrae that is similar to theropods, however as noted the exact placement is uncertain from the current study. Probably I find from reading the paper, one of the biggest problem is that we really have no idea what are some of the primitive features of early ornithischians. Is Nyasasaurus general enough to be their (saurischians and ornithischians) ancestor?

[SBell]

And just when we thought we could safely say dinosaurs originated in South America, too. Oh well, if East Africa is good enough for us it's good enough for dinosaurs too.

Also, since the definition of Dinosauria is either Triceratops + Aves or Megalosaurus + Iguanodon, Nyasasaurus would by definition need to be within Saurischia or Ornithischia or it's a basal dinosauriform instead. I wonder which one it is.

Africa and South America were essentially the same continent at the time. So nothing really changed on that front.

[IHogaRok]

I saw this oldest dinosaur thing a while ago. Its pretty interesting.