A third of dinosaur species may have never existed.
While much of pre-history is an unseen spectacle, while dinosaurs look and seem like the stuff of children’s nightmares, we have an unshaken belief that they were indeed here once upon a time. However, new evidence suggests that a third of of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.
According to new analyses by paleontologists at the University of California, Berkley, young dinosaurs did not look like minatures of their parents. Like birds, fish, and arguably, human beings, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes at the threshold of adulthood.
This means that many fossils of young dinosaurs, including the T-Rex relatives, may have been misidentified as unique species.