Dinosaurs Fled Europe

Dinosaurs fled from Europe for no apparent reasons, researchers have found.

20:42 28 April 2016

A major study that used a network theory techniques that are typically associated with computer science, has found that dinosaurs fled from Europe for no apparent reason. It also shows the movement of the dinosaurs over huge land bridges that connected the world’s continents together after the supercontinent Pangaea split apart.

 

The head of the study, Alex Dunhill, said: “We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents,”

 

"Such massive structures – spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia – may be hard to imagine. But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form."

 

He added: "This is a curious result that has no concrete explanation. It might be a real migratory pattern or it may be an artefact of the incomplete and sporadic nature of the dinosaur fossil record."

 

Network theory is a common way for computer scientists to map out connections between people or places online. However, this is the first time that the technology was used on dinosaur research.