Human ancestors coexisted with dinosaurs, study finds

According to a new study published last Tuesday in the scientific journal Current Biology (27), The ancestors of humans and dinosaurs lived together for a short time.. Scientists are talking about an extraordinary group of ancestors that lived around the same time as the dinosaurs, not the human lineage we know today.

A research team from the Universities of Bristol and Freiburg in Germany came to their conclusion after examining thousands of fossils of placental mammals, a class that includes animals such as dogs, bats and even humans. The data show that they lived about 66 million years ago, before the asteroid struck and caused the catastrophic event.

Molecular data of fossils It suggests that these animals were alive before the mass extinction event that occurred during the Cretaceous-Paleogene period (K-Pg).). The analysis confirms the existence of groups of placental mammals prior to the asteroid, suggesting they briefly coexisted with dinosaurs.

“The model we use estimates ages of origin based on when lineages first appeared in the fossil record and a model of species diversity over time for the lineage. University of Friborg representative Daniele Silvestro is also able to predict the age of extinction based on recent observations that the group went extinct,” said Daniele Silvestro, a representative of the University of Friborg.

Humans and dinosaurs together?

Thousands of placental mammal fossils were used, according to Emily Carlisle, lead author of the study and a representative of the University of Bristol. In this way, scientists were able to analyze the origin and extinction patterns of different animals at that time: They found that a group of primates, the ancestors of humans, evolved during the dinosaur era.

Scientists claim they don’t know what our placental ancestors looked like, but they probably looked like little squirrels. In any case, it’s important to note that modern lineages of placental mammals only began to emerge due to the event, as these groups were able to diversify further after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know what our placental mammalian ancestors looked like back then. Many of the earliest fossils of placental mammals are very small creatures; for example, one of the earliest primates ancestors, Purgatorius, was a small burrowing creature somewhat shrew-like. “It was small and looked like a squirrel,” he said.