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.