The novelty is in a work from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History (United States). He points out that, in the Triassic, the modern animals we know were just beginning to diversify into a variety of forms. Some of them ended up taking different paths. An example of this is Labrujasuchus expectatus. It is the bipedal relative of the crocodile.
Bipedal dinosaurs
It looked very similar to ornithomimosaurs. They are a group of bipedal dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period with a morphology similar to that of modern ostriches. But it belongs to the branch of archosaurs that gave rise to crocodiles, famous for their four legs and numerous teeth. This species moved around the world on two legs. It had tiny arms and a toothless mouth that ended in a beak. It was as far from a crocodile as possible.
Among the primary inhabitants of the time were the lagerpetids. They are cousins to the bipedal dinosaurs whose relatives would take to the skies as pterosaurs. The peculiar tree-dwelling Drepanosaurus had a single tree-sloth-like claw on its hands and a small one on its prehensile tail. There, the bipedal relative of the crocodile appeared strongly in this world of strange reptiles.
"Many of the successful strategies of modern animals and non-avian dinosaurs first emerged in the Triassic. These are a great example of that convergent evolution," they say. «Bipedalism is undoubtedly a unique strategy for crocodile relatives. But it is a strategy widely used by dinosaurs and, later, by birds. "Evidently, it worked for these animals." This new species is one of only five identified. The discovery was unexpected. That inspired the name of the species, 'expactus'. The genus name, Labrujasuchus, refers to the 'Ranchos de los Brujos', an old Spanish name for Rancho Fantasma.
Legends
According to legend, local ranchers named the site 'Ranchos de Los Brujos' to keep people away from cattle theft. «We wanted to pay tribute to that fascinating story. And honor the critical role Ghost Ranch has played in expanding our understanding of the Triassic. We also wanted to highlight how the fossil record works. Finding a shuvosaur from the early Triassic and another from the late Triassic meant that paleontologists knew that many more probably existed in the meantime, waiting to be discovered and described," the authors conclude.
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