The longstanding division of dinosaurs into 'bird-hipped' species including Stegosaurus and their 'lizard-hipped' counterparts such as Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex may no longer be valid, a study published on 22 March in Nature contends1. Among the other proposed changes to the dinosaur family tree, the long-necked herbivorous and often gargantuan sauropods such as Brachiosaurus are no longer as closely related to bipedal, meat-eating theropods such as T. rex as they were under previous schemes.
“This is a textbook changer — if it continues to pan out,” says Thomas Holtz, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. “It's only one analysis, but it's a thorough one.”
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