An Egyptian-American team of researchers has announced the discovery of a new species of large-bodied carnivore.
Scientists have studied a well-preserved vertebra frombase of the neck. It belongs to an abelisaurid, a theropod with a huge snout, small teeth and tiny hands, whose body length is estimated to be around six meters. Abelisaurids are among the most diverse and geographically widespread large carnivorous dinosaurs on the southern landmasses during the Cretaceous.
An abelisaurid neck vertebra from the Bahariya Oasis, Egypt. Credit: Ohio University
At the beginning of the twentieth century, they discovered in the Bahariya formationoriginal specimens of many carnivorous dinosaurs. Until recently, abelisaurid fossils had only been found in Europe and many of the modern continents of the Southern Hemisphere, but never before in the Bahariya Formation.
“In the middle of the Cretaceous period, the Bahariya oasis would have beenone of the scariest places on the planet,” explains Belal Salem, a graduate student at Ohio University, in a press release for the study. “How all these huge predators managed to coexist remains a mystery, although this is probably due to the fact that they fed on different animals and adapted to hunt different prey.”
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