Paleontologists in New Mexico have just dug up a two-legged, beak-mouthed reptile that looks almost exactly like a small dinosaur — except it lived more than a hundred million years before any dinosau

Key Points:

• In 2026, paleontologists from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County described Labrujasuchus expectatus, a bipedal, toothless-beaked reptile from Late Triassic northern New Mexico, which resembled small theropod dinosaurs but was actually a crocodile relative.
• Labrujasuchus belonged to the Shuvosauridae family, a group of crocodile cousins that evolved a dinosaur-like body plan over 100 million years before similar forms appeared in theropod dinosaurs, illustrating a striking example of convergent evolution.
• The discovery highlights that during the Triassic period, proto-crocodiles were experimenting with diverse body forms, including bipedalism and beaked mouths, at a time when dinosaurs were still minor players in terrestrial ecosystems.
• The fossil was found at the well-known Ghost Ranch site, where decades of excavation and study revealed it as an intermediate species filling a gap between older and younger shuvosaur fossils, underscoring the slow but steady nature of paleontological research.
• Beyond its unique anatomy, Labrujasuchus provides important insight into evolutionary processes, demonstrating that similar ecological niches have led unrelated reptile lineages to independently evolve comparable body plans multiple times across hundreds of millions of years.