A team of paleontologists and Earth scientists, studying the fossil records of the dinosaurs, have come up with a theory about the area from which the prehistoric reptiles migrated to various parts of the globe, according to UPI.
The team was busy mapping the movement of families of dinosaurs all throughout the Mesozoic Era, which encompasses the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of history, when they realized their work was telling them where and when the dinosaurs went out from Europe, but they weren’t finding any dinosaur families moving back into Europe. All of this was taking place about 125 to 100 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.
The researchers applied “network theory” to their findings, which is an analytical strategy that visualizes the relationship among groups, objects or ideas within a larger system, by using a wide-angle perspective. It is believed to be the first time such an approach has been taken with regard to dinosaur migration.
The team, from the University of Bath and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, used the entire catalog of dinosaur fossil records to cross-map families across time and the locations of the fossil discoveries.
Lead study author Alex Dunhill, a professor at Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment, said in a release, “This is a curious result that has no concrete explanation. It might be a real migratory pattern or it may be an artifact of the incomplete and sporadic nature of the dinosaur fossil record.”
Adding the team believed land bridges that appeared and went away due to changing sea levels, may have formed temporary walkways that allowed wandering dinosaur families to cross into the various continents, even as the super-continent Pangaea began to break apart. The team also believes this new research confirms what earlier researchers previously suspected, the theory that the dinosaurs were able to continue to expand their territories even after the break-up of Pangaea.
The findings from the team’s work can be found in the Journal of Biogeography.