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The African continent was 110
million years ago the land of huge carnivorous dinosaurs, Chicago researches
said on Thursday. Excavations on the continent unearthed two dinosaur fossils
in the Elrhaz Formation along the western edge of the Ténéré Desert in Niger in
a place known as “Gadoufaoua”. Both specimens lived in the mid-Cretaceous Period
and were at least 25 feet long with an appetite for meat.
According to University of Chicago
paleontologist Paul Sereno, Kryptos palaios was short-snouted, which means “old
hidden face”, with a long tail, but short forearms, which points to the fact
that it was likely a scavenger rather than a hunter, feeding on carcasses found
along the way.
Eocarcharia dinops on the other
hand was larger than Kryptos, reaching probably up to 40 feet in adulthood,
with very strong legs and bladed teeth. The “fierce-eyed dawn shark” was most
likely one of the fierce predators of its time, as its anatomy shows: strong
legs, perfect for hunting down its “lunch”, powerful claws and teeth for
tearing the flesh of its prey.
Along with the two, both found
during a 2000 expedition, comes a third, this time fish-eating species, found
three years earlier, named Suchomimus or “crocodile mimic”, reaching up to 35
feet in length, with a narrow and long snout.
“To have three large predators
in this area is really extraordinary,” said Sereno in the scientific journal
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, highlighting the fact that the triple discovery
unveiled three predators, on the same continent, all three carnivorous, but
with three different eating behaviors.
There is a striking resemblance
between Eocarcharia, the African predator, and the Tyrannosaurus-Rex, that
dominated the North American continent, both with strong feet and sharp teeth
designed for cutting and tearing flesh. But the fact that the three species
discovered did not interfere in each other’s eating habits is something totally
different to the North American continent, which still intrigues the
scientists.
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