New research from the University of Southampton and international partners has uncovered the mystery of why large Triassic dinosaurs took more than 30 million years to populate the tropics.

For years, palaeontologists have had different theories about why they could find no evidence of large, long-necked, herbivore dinosaurs (sauropodomorphs) living at low latitudes, until at least 30 million years after they first appeared on earth, and 10 to 15 million years after they became abundant at higher latitudes (both north and south of the equator).