February 24, 2021 at 6:00 am
A drop in carbon dioxide levels may have helped sauropodomorphs, early relatives of the largest animal to ever walk the earth, migrate thousands of kilometers north past once-forbidding deserts around 214 million years ago.
Scientists pinpointed the timing of the dinosaurs’ journey from South America to Greenland by correlating rock layers with sauropodomorph fossils to changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Using that timeline, the team found that the creatures’ northward push coincides with a dramatic decrease in CO
2, which may have removed climate-related barriers, the team reports February 15 in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Seismosaurus as well as their smaller ancestors (