2023-08-23 20:00:49
Paleontologists have discovered in Morocco fossils of primitive cousins of the T-rex that they had short bulldog muzzles and even shorter arms.
The two new species of dinosaurs belong to the Abelisaurids, a family of meat-eating dinosaurs that were homologues of the tyrannosaurs of the northern hemisphere. They lived at the end of the Cretaceous period and show that the dinosaurs were diverse in africa just before its mass extinction by an asteroid 66 million years ago.
Have been found Two new species of dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous in Morocco, on the outskirts of Casablanca. One species, found near the town of Sidi Daoui, is represented by a predator’s foot bone about eight feet long. The other, from nearby Sidi Chennane, is the shinbone of a carnivore that grew to about five meters in length.
Both were part of a family of primitive carnivorous dinosaurs known as abelisaursand lived alongside the much larger abelisaur Chenanisaurus barbaricus, showing that Morocco was home to diverse dinosaur species just before a giant asteroid hit at the end of the Cretaceous, ending the age of dinosaurs.
new species
Dr. Nick Longrich, of the Milner Center for Evolution of the University of Bath, led the study, which was published in Cretaceous Research. He said: “The amazing thing here is that it’s seabed. It’s a shallow tropical sea full of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and sharks. It’s not exactly a place where one would expect to find many dinosaurs. But we are finding them.”
Although dinosaurs account for a small proportion of the fossils, the region is so rich in fossils which has produced the best image of African dinosaurs since the end of the dinosaur age.
Instead of finding the same few species, the paleontologists often recover fossils from new speciessuggesting that the beds support an extremely diverse dinosaur fauna.
So far, the small number of dinosaur fossils that have been recovered represent five different species: A small duck-billed dinosaur named Ajnabia, a long-necked titanosaur, the giant abelisaur Chenanisaurus, and now the two new abelisaurs.
Dr. Longrich said in a statement: “We also have other fossilsbut are currently under study. So we can’t say much about them at this point, except that they were an amazingly diverse dinosaur fauna.”
asteroid impact
the last dinosaurs they disappeared about 66 million years ago, along with up to 90% of all species on Earth, including mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and ammonites. The pattern of extinction at the end of the Cretaceous and its causes have been debated for more than 200 years.
The impact of a giant asteroid in the Yucatan peninsula it has been linked to their demise, although it has been argued that the dinosaurs were already in decline. Moroccan dinosaurs suggest they thrived in North Africa to the end.
“The end of the Cretaceous in western North America definitely seems to become less diverse at the end,” Longrich said. “But that’s only a small part of the world. It’s not clear that you can generalize from the dinosaurs of Wyoming and Montana to the entire world.
“I also know got colder towards the end, so it would not be surprising if dinosaurs at higher latitudes became less diverse. But we don’t know much about lower-latitude dinosaurs. At least in Morocco, they appear to have remained diverse and successful to the end.
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“When the T-rex reigned as a mega-predator in North Americaabelisaurs were at the top of food chains in North Africa,” said Nour-Eddine Jalil, a professor at the Museum of Natural History and a researcher at Cadi Ayyad University in Morocco, who co-authored the paper.
“Dinosaur remains, despite their rarity, carry the same messages as the remains of marine reptiles, more abundant. They tell us that just before the Cretaceous-Paleogene crisis, biodiversity was not declining but rather diverse.”
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