Time to rewrite the dinosaur textbooks’ Not quite yet!

However, this is not at all the case. Recently, Matthew Baron and colleagues from the University of Cambridge proposed a radical revision to our understanding of the major branches of dinosaurs, but in a critique published today some caution is proposed before we rewrite the textbooks. Every child learns that dinosaurs fall into two major groups, the Ornithischia (bird-hipped dinosaurs; Stegosaurus , Triceratops , Iguanodon and their kin) and the Saurischia (lizard-hipped dinosaurs; the predatory theropods, such as Tyrannosaurus , and the long-necked sauropodomorphs, including such well-known forms as Diplodocus ). Baron and colleagues proposed a very different split, pairing the Ornithischia with the Theropoda, terming the new group the Ornithoscelida, and leaving the Sauropodomorpha on its own. Their evidence seemed overwhelming, since they identified at least 18 unique characters shared by ornithischians and theropods, and used these as evidence that the two groups had shared a common ancestor. An international consortium of specialists in early dinosaurs, led by Max Langer from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and including experts from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain has now re-evaluated the data provided by Baron et al. in support of their claim.