#herrerasaurus

And that's what it was. It is this very early mix of everything that dinosaurs became, but also a bunch of basal ancient stuff. And then also things it does that nothing else does, like its weird hips and the mushroom tops on its spine bones.

230 million years old, this thing is. We don't even know if it's technically a dinosaur yet, because alligator ancestor / cousins of the time were also deciding to run around on their back legs.

We know dinosaurs came out of this general era of the Late Triassic. And this animal looks vaguely like them. But that was a wild time. And we just don't know what this dude was up to.