BERLIN — A giant, plant-eating creature with a beak-like mouth and reptilian features may have roamed the Earth during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, scientists said Thursday. In a paper published Thursday by the journal Science, Polish researchers claim their find overturns the notion that the only giant plant-eaters at the time were dinosaurs. The elephant-sized creature, known as Lisowicia bojani after a village in southern Poland where its remains were found, belonged to the same evolutionary branch as mammals. Similar fossils from so-called dicynodonts have been found elsewhere, but they were dated to be from an earlier period, before a series of natural disasters wiped out most species on Earth. Kammerer said that while dicynodonts and dinosaurs existed at the same time, there’s no evidence yet that they lived in the same habitats.

Source: National Post November 22, 2018 19:04 UTC