One of the world’s most dangerous prehistoric ecosystems just added another huge predator to its formation. In the Bahariya Formation, a famous fossil site in Egypt Sahara desertA team of Egyptian and American paleontologists recently discovered a huge fossil vertebra belonging to a new species of carnivorous abelisaurid dinosaur, a bipedal carnivorous group that lived during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).
Like other abelisaurids, the new dinosaur had a shortened, bulldog-like face. And despite his ferocious appearance, this carnivore probably wasn’t the biggest and meanest boss to roam its trampling grounds.
“We are about 99% sure that, unlike some of its relatives from other times and places, this particular abelisaurid was Not at the top of its food chain, ”Matthew Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and one of the researchers who discovered the dinosaur, told Live Science in an email.
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Although Lamanna and her fellow scientists found only one bone, they were able to almost immediately identify the fossil as an abelisaurid vertebra, based on distinctive structures called the epipophysis. “This is a multisyllabic word that basically means ‘sticky pieces in the upper left and upper right of the vertebra,'” Lamanna said. This abelisaurid is the first dinosaur of its kind to be discovered at the Bahariya Formation site. After performing a computerized analysis of bone morphology, the team concluded that it belonged to a previously unknown species, which has not yet been given a scientific name. They published their findings on June 8 in the journal Open science of real society (opens in a new tab).
An abelisaurid somewhat resembled a stout build Tyrannosaurus Rex, only with even more squat arms, Smithsonian magazine (opens in a new tab) reported. They have been roaming the Southern Hemisphere since the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago, until the asteroid Chicxulub stopped the Cretaceous. Perhaps the most famous amelisaurid is the cuckold Carnotaur, a Patagonian predator that reached 25 feet (7.6 meters) in length, according to Natural History Museum of London (opens in a new tab). His name is taken from the Latin words for “meat” and “bull” and animated versions of this fearsome carnivore have appeared in Apple TV’s “Prehistoric Planet” and in the “Jurassic Park” franchise (although, his depictions show varying degrees of scientific accuracy).
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Researchers suspect that the newly discovered ablisauride was smaller than Carnotaur, probably only reaching 16 to 20 feet (5 to 6 meters) in length. And compared to predators that shared its natural habitat 98 million years ago, the newfound abelisaurid would have been a relative pipsqueak.
The Bahariya Formation previously housed a slice of prehistoric life rich in predators. This vast mangrove swamp was once home to numerous species of fish, turtles, snakes, and dinosaurs. The newfound abelisaurid would have rubbed his elbows (metaphorically speaking) with a T.rex double known as Carcharodontosaurus; a mysterious giant therapod (bipedal three-toed dinosaurs) called Bahariasaurus; the monstrous Spinosaurus, which had long, thin crocodile-like jaws and a sail growing from its back; and giant predatory fish and crocodiles.
Finding so many large predators living together in a single ecosystem is rare, Lamanna said. “How this 98-million-year-old environment managed to support not one but four huge predatory dinosaurs remains an enigma,” she added.
The fossil just described is now preserved in the permanent collection of the Vertebrate Paleontology Center of the University of Mansoura in Egypt. In the future, Lamanna and her co-authors plan to return to the Bahariya Formation and look for more bones from their abelisaurid, and perhaps even give it a name.
“Hopefully, sooner or later more of this Bahariya beast will show up,” Lamanna said.
Originally published in Live Science.