Herrerasaurus

Herrerasaurus’ discovery date is quite a mystery. But we know that it was first discovered by a  rancher by the name of Victorino Herrera, who found it in his vast expanse of land. Soon, it was named in 1963 by a palaeontologist by the name of Osvaldo Reig. It was named in honour of the discoverer, hence its name meaning “Herrera’s lizard.”

Finally, dinosaurs were achieving bigger sizes. Somehow, there didn’t seem to be a striking evolutionary process for this gargantuan, beastly predator. The reason why? Dinosaurs came into existence in the Late Triassic (Late Carnian), and the first dinosaurs to descend from their dinosauromorph (dinosaur form) ancestors were Eoraptor, Pisanosaurus, Panphagia and guess who, Herrerasaurus.*

The biggest and baddest of the non-theropod predators was a whopping 7 metres ( well, quite frankly, whopping for its time) in length from its gaping mouth to the tip of its tail! And, even more disbelieving, this was a sauropod ancestor. If so, how did its descendants turn into 20+ metre, tranquil, herbivorous heavyweights that wouldn’t hurt a fly?

Well, maybe somewhere along the track, to accustom to their surroundings and to evade predators using sheer gigantism, prosauropods, which we’ll come to later, and their cousins, the herrerasaurs made the huge switch. We can see this kind of middle stage in dinosaurs like Antetonitrus, which can adapt to an omnivorous life of insect grubs and plant matter. The diet of insect larvae would allow Antetonitrus to grow to the huge size of 28 metres estimated for it.

Quick facts-Herrerasaurus:
Length: 6.8 metres
Weight: 350 kilograms
Habitat: Northern Argentina; Ischigualasto Formation
Type: Lightweight, mid-size predator
Related Dinosaurs: Sanjuanasaurus, Eoraptor, Frenguellisaurus, Ischisaurus, Staurikosaurus, Alwalkeria, Chindesaurus