Editor's Summary

5 May 2005

Going vegetarian

The discovery of a well preserved fossil of an early therizinosauroid dinosaur in a Utah quarry marks the first North American record of what is largely an Asian group, predating the formation of the Alaskan land bridge. This raises new questions about the origins of these dinosaurs as well as indicating a faunal exchange between Asia and North America via Europe in the Early Cretaceous. In addition various primitive features of this fossil suggest a pattern by which herbivory could have developed from a carnivorous ancestor.

Letter: A primitive therizinosauroid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Utah

James I. Kirkland, Lindsay E. Zanno, Scott D. Sampson, James M. Clark and Donald D. DeBlieux

doi: 10.1038/nature03468

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