Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
with today. The common ancestor of Enantiornithes and modern
birds possessed a small tuft of feathers that attaches to the first finger,
or thumb, of the hand. This "bastard wing" was an important aero-
dynamic innovation and somewhat comparable to the flaps of an air-
plane. The fine-tuning of flight capabilities led to a large radiation of
birds. Enantiornithes quickly adapted to life in the water, in the air,
across more open terrain, and even in deserts. In fact, the primary ini-
tial goal of our expedition was to find fossils of this primitive group of
birds.
The other major branch within saurischians includes the giant
plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropodomorphs, which arose from a
common ancestor with a relatively long neck and small head. This
group contains the largest animals ever to have walked on land, and
walk they did. Their remains have been recovered from every conti-
nent.
The earliest member of the group is
Saturnalia,
a 230-million-year-
old dinosaur from the late Triassic of Brazil, who had a gracile body
that was about five feet long with a small head and a long neck. A
more advanced and better known primitive sauropodomorph is the
Genealogical relationships of sauropods.
