Staurikosaurus Gets A Google Doodle!

OH YEAH!

So I was just browsing this morning and found art of a fossil being uncovered instead of the typical Google logo in the corner. I thought this was a new doodle about National Fossil Day in the United States, but this was something different. This was an artistic graphic slideshow representing the examination of a fossil of the Staurikosaurus. It was very delighting to interact with, especially that I never thought such an unpopular dinosaur would get its own Google doodle, compared to the likes of Tyrannosaurus and whatever.

By Johnny Mingau

Staurikosaurus, named after the Southern Cross constellation, was one of the earliest of the dinosaur clade. This two-metre long carnivore lived in Brazil during the Late Triassic period 233 million years ago, with other antique dinosaurs like Saturnalia, an early, turkey-sized relative of the long-necked sauropods. At this time, all the continents on Earth were merged into one supercontinent called Pangaea, creating an environment of mostly dry desert, where dinosaurs were still evolving and were not the dominant animals of the time, unlike the synapsids and pseudosuchians around. Specifically, Staurikosaurus is a member of the Herrerasauria (although the doodle for some reason doesn’t say so). These very ancient dinosaurs are similar to the carnivorous theropods, but also have odd, non-theropod features, both primitive and derived on their own, and their classification is currently a mystery. They are most conventionally classified as relatives of the sauropodomorphs in the saurischian order ("lizard-hipped" dinosaurs), but have also been classified as in between them and theropods in the order, as theropods themselves, or even not dinosaurs at all, but early, convergent relatives of them. Whatever Staurikosaurus and its kin may be, they are an interesting insight to the dawn of the dinosaurs like them.