"Bizarre" carnivorous dinosaurs discovered in Sahara
Thursday, 14 Feb 2008 08:12
Palaeontologists reveal two new species of carnivorous dinosaurs found in Sahara
American palaeontologists have hailed the discovery of two new "bizarre" carnivorous dinosaurs in the Sahara.
The fossilised remains of 110-million-year-old Kryptops and Eocarcharia, which were both about 25ft long, have been cited as evidence of an earlier evolutionary stage of giant predators.
Paul Sereno, a palaeontologist who led the University of Chicago expedition to Niger in 2000, said the two dinosaurs provided a sharp contrast to Tyrannosaurus-rex – the iconic dinosaur species that never left the northern hemisphere.
"T-rex has become such a fixture of Cretaceous lore, most people don't realise that no tyrannosaur ever set foot on a southern continent," he told the Palaeontologica Polonica journal.
Both dinosaurs are understood to have been mainly scavengers; shunning live prey.
Kryptops, whose name means 'old hidden face', is described as a "fast, two-legged hyena gnawing and pulling apart a carcass".
And Eocarcharia dinops – 'fierce-eyed dawn shark' – is said to have had teeth mainly designed for severing body parts.
Mr Sereno explained the two carnivores are just part of the "panoply of bizarre species" that lived on the southern continent Gondwana, which was roughly made up of modern-day South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India.