Scientists discover 200-million-year-old dinosaur ecosystem

Scientists, studying a fossil site of “unique importance”, have learnt about a lost prehistoric ecosystem which was home to dinosaurs over 200 million years ago.

At Lavernock on the south coast of Wale in the United Kingdom, a team of palaeontologists described and analysed fossil beds for a study published in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.

These fossil beds have been dated back to the Triassic period, which lasted from roughly 252-201 million years ago. This was the same period when the dinosaurs first appeared.

"The bone beds there have been known since the 19th century, but had yet to be investigated by modern paleontologists," Owain Evans, lead author of the study with the University of Bristol in the UK, told Newsweek.

"We hoped to officially record the geological strata, and further understand the fossil fauna—what was the local ecology like 200 million years ago?" he added.