New research has revealed that it is possible that our human ancestors may have actually lived alongside the dinosaurs. To this end, scientists conducted a study that indicates the existence of placental mammals before the asteroid impact that marked the end of the Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago.
According to an article recently published in the magazine Current Biologythe fossil record of placental mammals indicates that our ancestors already roamed the Earth before the extinction event and then thrived due to the lack of competition from the various dinosaur species.
The research also suggests that primates evolved shortly before the collision of asteroid. Understand below the main points that formed the basis for the study.
Did humans live alongside dinosaurs?
The burning question is: did humanity really coexist with dinosaurs? For Emily Carlisle, lead author of the study and researcher at the School of Earth Sciences at Bristol, UK:
“We collected thousands of fossils of placental mammals and were able to identify the patterns of origin and extinction of the different groups. Based on this, we were able to estimate when these placental mammals evolved,” she says, confirming that yes, human ancestors possibly coexisted with dinosaurs.
Image: Dolly Dinosaur – Cary Woodruff/Reproduction
In turn, Daniele Silvestro, co-author of the same study and senior researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, shares:
“Our model estimates ages of origin based on when lineages first appear in the fossil record, as well as the pattern of species diversity over time for each lineage.”
Although the exact appearance of the human ancestors from that time is still uncertain, it is believed that they were “small and strange”, without having the exact shape of the bipedal mammals that we know.
Carlisle explained that, unfortunately, there is no complete picture of what our ancestors were like. mammals placentals at that time, reporting that many of the earliest fossils of the species are quite small creatures, such as Purgatorius.
This small, bat-like, burrowing creature was an early ancestor of primates, so it’s likely that many of our ancestors were quite similar to them.
The study is in secondary development to move from the theoretical stage and be conducted to investigations of possible traces in the archaeological sites mentioned in your text.
