Predator “dawn runner” dinosaur found in the Valley of the Moon

A lanky predator roamed South America in search of prey as the age of the dinosaurs began, approximately 230mya. This dinosaur, named Eodromaeus (the “dawn runner”), sported a long neck and tail, and weighed only 4.5kg to 6.8kg. A team of palaeontologists and geologists from Argentina and the USA announced the discovery of dawn runner in January 2011.

Reconstruction of Eodromaeus,
by Todd Marshall.

“It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era,” said Paul Sereno, University of Chicago palaeontologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. “Who could foretell what evolution had in store for the descendants of this pint-sized, fleet-footed predator?”
Sereno and his colleagues described a near-complete skeleton of the new species, based on the rare discovery of two individuals found side-by-side, in the 14 January 2011 issue of the journal Science. The paper presents a new snapshot of the dawn of the dinosaur era – a key period that has garnered less attention than the dinosaurs’ demise. “It’s more complex than some had supposed,” Sereno said.

Dr Paul Sereno. Photo by Mike Hettwer.

Set in picturesque foothills of the Andes, the site of the discovery is known as the “Valley of the Moon,” said the report’s lead author, Ricardo Martinez of Argentina’s National University of San Juan. For dinosaur palaeontologists, it is like no other. “Two generations of field work have generated the single best view we have of the birth of the dinosaurs,” Martinez said. “With a hike across the valley, you literally walk over the graveyard of the earliest dinosaurs, to a time when they ultimately dominate.”
The area was once a rift valley in the southwest corner of the supercontinent Pangaea. Sediments covered skeletons over a period of five million years, eventually accumulating a thickness of more than 700m. Volcanoes associated with the nascent Andes Mountains occasionally spewed volcanic ash into the valley, allowing the team to use radioactive elements in the ash layers to determine the age of the sediments.

Eodromaeus in the flesh. Photo by Mike Hettwer.

“Radioisotopes – our clocks in the rocks – not only placed the new species in time, about 230 million years ago, but also gave us perspective on the development of this key valley,” said Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California. “About five million years of time are represented in these layers, from one end to the other.”
In the oldest rocks, Eodromaeus lived alongside Eoraptor, a similar-sized, plant-eating dinosaur that Sereno and colleagues discovered in the valley in 1991. Eoraptor’s descendants would eventually include the giant, long-necked sauropods. Eodromaeus, with stabbing canine teeth and sharp-clawed grasping hands, is the pint-sized precursor to later meat-eaters called theropods, and eventually to birds.
“We’re looking at a snapshot of early dinosaur life. Their storied evolutionary careers are just unfolding, but at this point they’re actually quite similar,” Sereno said.

Eodromaeus at the root of the dinosaur family tree

Vexing scientific questions at the dawn of the dinosaur era include what gave them an edge over competitors and how quickly did they rise to dominance? In Eodromaeus’ day, other kinds of reptiles outnumbered dinosaurs, such as squat, lizard-like rhynchosaurs and mammal-like reptiles. The authors logged thousands of fossils unearthed in the valley to find, as Martinez remarked, that “dinosaurs took their sweet time to dominate the scene.” Their competitors dropped out sequentially over several million years, not at a single horizon in the valley.
In the red cliffs on the far side of the valley, larger plant and meat-eating dinosaurs had evolved many times the size of Eoraptor and Eodromaeus, but it would be even later when they dominated all land habitats in the succeeding Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
“The story from this valley suggests that there was no single advantage or lucky break for dinosaurs, but rather a long period of evolutionary experimentation in the shadow of other groups,” Sereno said. Other researchers on the paper tracked climate change and other conditions across the layers of the valley. “The dawn of the age of dinosaurs,” Martinez remarked, “is coming into focus.”
All of the quotations in this article come from a conversation between Paul Sereno and the author, which took place shortly before the referenced Science article was published.

Valley of the Moon-Argentina.

Reference

Ricardo N. Martinez, Paul C. Sereno, Oscar A. Alcober, Carina E. Colombi, Paul R. Renne, Isabel P. Montañez, Brian S. Currie, “A Basal Dinosaur from the Dawn of the Dinosaur Era in Southwestern Pangaea,” Science, Vol. 331, No. 6014, Jan. 14, 2011, pp. 206-210.

Funding sources

The Whitten-Newman Foundation, Island Fund of the New York Community Trust, Earthwatch Institute, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Packard Foundation, Gorden Getty Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.

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Filed under: dinosaurs, fossils Tagged: Dawn Runner, Dinosaur, dinosaurs, Eodromaeus, Fossil, Fossil Collecting, fossils, Valley of the Moon
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