Osteohistological insight into the growth dynamics of early dinosaurs and their contemporaries

Early dinosaurs from the Ischigualasto Formation exhibited elevated growth rates, comparable to or exceeding those of later Mesozoic sauropodomorphs and theropods. Unlike later dinosaurs, these early species grew more continuously rather than in rapid bursts. This suggests that high growth rates were an ancestral trait for Dinosauria and played a key role in their ecological success, though they did not uniquely set them apart from contemporaries like crocodylomorphs and pseudosuchians.

Curry Rogers, K., Martínez, R. N., Colombi, C., Rogers, R. R., & Alcober, O. (2024). Osteohistological insight into the growth dynamics of early dinosaurs and their contemporaries. Plos One, 19(4), e0298242. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298242