The problem of dinosaur origins: integrating three approaches to the rise of Dinosauria

@article{Padian2012ThePO,  title={The problem of dinosaur origins: integrating three approaches to the rise of Dinosauria},  author={Kevin Padian},  journal={Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh},  year={2012},  volume={103},  pages={423 - 442},  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:128420276}}
The event that is called the (phylogenetic) origin of dinosaurs was trivial compared to the origin of Ornithodira; and the “Age of Dinosaurs” proper did not begin until the Jurassic, so re-framing the thinking on these issues will improve understanding of clade dynamics, timing of macroevolutionary events, and the effects of Triassic climate change on terrestrial vertebrates.

29 Citations

The precise temporal calibration of dinosaur origins

Using precise radioisotopic ages, it is demonstrated that the temporal gap between assemblages containing only dinosaur precursors and those with the first dinosaurs was 5–10 million years shorter than previously thought, suggesting that the origin of dinosaurs was a relatively rapid evolutionary event.

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Analysis of body size, as deduced from track size, suggests that archosauriform average body size did not change significantly from the Late Permian to the Early Triassic, and a survey of facies yielding both skeletal and track record indicate an ecological preference for inland fluvial (lacustrine) environments for early Archosauromorphs.

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This study has found a sister-group relationship between Ornithischia and Theropoda (united in the new clade Ornithoscelida), with Sauropodomorpha and Herrerasauridae (as the redefined Saurischia) forming its monophyletic outgroup.

The osteology of the Late Triassic reptile Scleromochlus taylori from μCT data

It is demonstrated that Scleromochlus taylori is an avemetatarsalian archosaur that is recovered firmly in an early diverging position within Pterosauromorpha, as a member of Lagerpetidae, thus shedding important information on the origin of pterosaurs, the first group of vertebrates to evolve powered flight.

The age of transformation: the Triassic Period and the rise of today's land vertebrate fauna

Different groups dominated different global regions, changes in the tetrapod faunas through time were not in lockstep, and several waves of faunal replacement took place.

Pisanosaurus mertii and the Triassic ornithischian crisis: could phylogeny offer a solution?

An Early Jurassic origin of Ornithischia would force us to consider that the anatomical similarities between ornithischians and Early Jurassic taxa might not be convergences, and to broaden the current datasets of early dinosaurs to test these ideas.

A brief review of non-avian dinosaur biogeography: state-of-the-art and prospectus

Dinosaurs potentially originated in the mid-palaeolatitudes of Gondwana and may have been restricted to cooler, humid areas by low-latitude arid zones until climatic amelioration made northern dispersals feasible ca 215 Ma, but this scenario is challenged by new Carnian Laurasian fossils and evidence that even the earliest dinosaurs had adaptations for arid conditions.

Untangling the tree or unravelling the consensus? Recent developments in the quest to resolve the broad-scale relationships within Dinosauria

The scientific consensus on dinosaur origins and their early relationships is unravelled, with no sign of an emerging consensus and the construction of new data sets with a stronger focus on the logical underpinning of characters holding the key to resolving this debate.

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The recognition of what are now commonly termed the Dinosauria, as a peculiar group of the Reptilia, is due to that remarkable man whose recent death all who are interested in the progress of sound…

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A time-calibrated phylogeny of Archosauriformes indicates that the origin and initial diversification of archosauria occurred during the Early Triassic following the Permian-Triassic extinction.

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