Did you know that the ordinary chicken is actually a descendant of the dinosaurs? In fact, all the birds of today actually descended from the dinosaurs such as the T-Rex and Velociraptors.
But the birds look nothing like the dinosaurs, right?
A new study has revealed that there were some dinosaurs that looked like birds. In fact, there was a particular dinosaur that actually looked like a parrot!
Here’s the proof that the dinosaur probably looked like this
Scientists have discovered a dinosaur that used to live in the Gobi desert, and it had nut-cracking jaws like a parrot.
This dinosaur was about a meter long, and it had a head shaped like a parrot’s head – with a boxlike skull and beaklike jaw to crack open nuts. This dinosaur used to eat seeds and hard, fibrous nuts.
This one also had giant jaw muscles attached to broad sheets of extremely hard cheekbones. This means that the dinosaur had an extremely powerful bite. It was also able to move its jaw both ways like a parrot does – horizontally and vertically.
They lived in Central Asia and ate such hard nuts that are not found today
The 110-million-year-old skull was found along with 50 stomach stones. Any animal or bird having stomach stones is indicator that the animals often swallow up some rocks to help them grind hard food in their stomach. Many chickens have sand and gravel in their gizzards to help them grind up grain
This dinosaur is named Psittacosaurus gobiensis (meaning parrot reptile of the Gobi) – and this one along with its close cousins were the first nut-eating dinosaurs that we know of.
Most of these dinosaurs were found in Central Asia where they thrived. It is also said that these dinosaurs had some very odd features which we don’t see in modern-day reptiles – such as elaborate horns and porcupine-like tail bristles.
All Featured Images Courtesy: Science Magazine