Scientists find what may have been the first dinosaur - and say it was similar in size to a Labrador with a tail 5 feet long

The first dinosaur to have walked on Earth may have been found by scientists.
Nyasasaurus parringtoni would have been alive 10 to 15 million years before any previously known dinosaurs - and more than 150million years before the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The size of a Labrador and slight of build, Nyasasaurus had a five foot-long tail and likely walked upright on two legs.

Nyasasaurus parringtoni, either the earliest dinosaur or the closest dinosaur relative yet discovered. It was up to three metres long, and similar in size to a golden retriever

The fossilised bones were collected during a Cambridge University expedition to Tanzania in the 1930s and gradually examined over the decades by Natural History Museum palaeontologist Alan Charig.
He requested that the work be continued on his death and the full details have now been published.
Dr Paul Barrett, a NHM dinosaur expert who took part in the study, said: 'We don't know if it walked on two legs or four legs but our prediction is that it's two legs and the reason is that the majority of early dinosaurs are two-legged animals.
'We don't know what it ate because we don't have any of the teeth of skull.
'But other early dinosaurs had a mixed diet.'
The remains do, however, allow for its size to be estimated. Nyasasaurus is believed to have been 6.5 to 10ft from nose to tail, with its tail accounting for half of that.
Its slight build means it would have lived 'in the shadow' of other much larger reptiles alive at the time.

The humerus, or upper arm bone, of Nyasasaurus parringtoni next to a cross section of the bone. The many colors indicate that the bone fibers are disorganized, much like those of early dinosaurs.

University of Washington researcher Dr Sterling Nesbitt said: 'If the newly named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far.
'Nyasasaurus establishes that dinosaurs likely evolved earlier than previously expected and refutes the idea that dinosaur diversity burst onto the scene in the Late Triassic, a burst of diversification unseen in any other groups at that time.'

WHERE DINOSAURS CAME FROM

It may not be correct to say dinosaurs originated in Tanzania because when Nyasasaurus lived the world’s continents were joined in the landmass called Pangaea.
Tanzania would have been part of Southern Pangaea that included Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia.
Dr Paul Barrett, of the Natural History Museum in London, said: 'The new findings place the early evolution of dinosaurs and dinosaur like reptiles firmly in the southern continents.

The specimen, which is detailed in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, is stored in London at the Natural History Museum.
Remains of a second of the creatures are kept in Cape Town.
Nyasasaurus parringtoni is named after the African lake Nyasa (also known as Lake Malawi) and Rex Parrington, the Cambridge University palaeontologist who collected the specimen in the 1930s.

Bones of Nyasasaurus parringtoni were collected in southwest Tanzania in the 1930s from the Manda beds, which preserves fossils of many animals from the Triassic Period of Earth's history.

The bones of the new animal reveal a number of characteristics common to early dinosaurs and their close relatives.
For example, the bone tissues in the upper arm bone appear as if they are woven haphazardly and not laid down in an organised way indicating rapid growth, a common feature of dinosaurs.
Biologist Sarah Werning, of the University of California, Berkeley, who did the bone analysis, said: 'We can tell from the bone tissues Nyasasaurus had a lot of bone cells and blood vessels.
'In living animals, we only see this many bone cells and blood vessels in animals that grow quickly, like some mammals or birds.
'The bone tissue of Nyasasaurus is exactly what we would expect for an animal at this position on the dinosaur family tree.
'It is a very good example of a transitional fossil; the bone tissue shows Nyasasaurus grew about as fast as other primitive dinosaurs, but not as fast as later ones.'
Another example is the upper arm bone’s distinctively enlarged crest, needed to anchor the upper arm muscles.