32.3: Final Thoughts
- Page ID
- 22817
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Obviously, there is still much to learn about the dinosaur family tree, in how individual members are placed and how they are interrelated. Understanding the seven major groups, theropods, sauropods, stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, ornithopods, ceratopsians, and pachycephalosaurs, is a first step to help the novice place a new dinosaur in the greater context, and also understand the history of life a little bit better. As more discoveries are presented, old ideas have been abandoned in favor of better hypotheses, with inconsistencies and unknowns debated, both hallmarks of science. How these animals fit into the greater reptile family tree in the Mesozoic also demonstrates these changing ideas of evolutionary history, as well as great examples of convergent evolution. Even our understanding of modern animals, like birds and crocodiles, has been enhanced as we learn about their extinct dinosaur relatives. For more details on the debates within the dinosaur family tree, please read the dinosaur debate section of this text.
Further Reading
Baron, Matthew G.; Norman, David B.; Barrett, Paul (2017). “A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution” (PDF). Nature. 543 (7646): 501–506.
Brusatte, S. The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World