Dinosaurs Left Europe??

Researchers have used network theory to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world during the Mesozoic Era -- including a curious exodus from Europe.

According to a research published in the Journal of Biogeography, dinosaurs continued to migrate to all parts of the world after the supercontinent Pangaea split into land masses that are separated by oceans.

In the study, the researchers used the Paleobiology Database that contains every documented and accessible dinosaur fossil from around the world. Fossil records for the same dinosaur families from different continents were then cross-mapped for different periods of time, revealing connections that show how they have migrated.

Some regions of the world, such as Europe, have extensive fossil records from a long history of palaeontology digs, while other parts of the world have been largely unexplored. To help account for this disparity in fossil records, which could otherwise skew the finding, the researchers applied a fliter to the database records to only count the first time that a dinosaur family connection occurred between two continents. The findings support the idea that, although continental splitting undoubtedly reduced intercontinental migration of dinosaurs, it did not completely inhibit it.

Suprisingly, the research also showed that all connections between Europe and other continents durinf the Early Cretaceous (125 - 100 million) were out-going. That is while dinosaurs families were leaving Europe, no new families  were migrated  into Europe.

While Network theory is commonly used in computer science for quantifying internet data, such as friend connection in the social media. It has only recently been applied to biology research and this is the first study it to on dinosaurs research.