Last Tyrannosaurus Rexor rather, their closest relatives, who managed to live on the surface of the Earth in the Cretaceous period, were discovered in Morocco in the vicinity of Casablanca.
The two new dinosaur species belong to the Abelisauridae, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs that were the counterparts of the Northern Hemisphere tyrannosaurs and show that dinosaurs were diverse in Africa just before its asteroid mass extinction 66 million years ago.
One species, found near the town of Sidi Dowy, is a carnivore foot bone about eight feet (2.5 meters) long. Another, found near Sidi Chennane, is a carnivore tibia that has grown to about 5 meters (15 feet) in length.
The study was led by Dr. Nick Longrich of the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath. He said: “What is amazing here is that it is the seabed.
“This is a shallow tropical sea filled with plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and sharks. This is not exactly where you would expect to see many dinosaurs. But we find them.”
“When t-rex reigned as mega-predators in North America, abelisaurs were at the top of the food chains in North Africa,” said Noor-Eddin Jalil, professor at the Museum of Natural History and researcher at Qadi Ayyad University in Morocco, who was a co-author of the paper.
“The remains of dinosaurs, despite their rarity, carry the same information as the remains of the most common marine reptiles. They tell us that just before the Cretaceous-Paleogene crisis, biodiversity was not declining, but rather diverse.”
Source: Digital Trends
I am Garth Carter and I work at Gadget Onus. I have specialized in writing for the Hot News section, focusing on topics that are trending and highly relevant to readers. My passion is to present news stories accurately, in an engaging manner that captures the attention of my audience.
