A new study suggests that dinosaurs were highly diverse in North Africa before the Cretaceous mass extinction event.Credit: Nicholas Longrich
Unidentified dinosaur fossils, resembling abelisaurids, have been discovered in the vast Ouled Abdoun Basin, a large phosphate sedimentary valley, in northern Morocco.
Researchers found the bones while investigating the variety of marine reptiles in Morocco, dated to shortly before the Cretaceous mass extinction event, which wiped out around 75% of Earth’s plant and animal species about 66 million years ago. The reports, published in Cretaceous Research, suggests that dinosaurs were highly diverse in North Africa before the mass extinction.
“There are so many bones in these layers that occasionally rare dinosaurs show up, giving us a glimpse of the terrestrial animals,” says Nicholas Longrich, palaeontologist at the University of Bath, UK who led the study.
A metatarsal from Sidi Daoui represents a small abelisaurid; despite its small size, the mature bone texture suggests that it represents a distinct species of small-bodied, gracile abelisaurid, rather than a juvenile of a larger species.Credit: Nicholas Longrich
The first, from the phosphates area of Sidi Chennane, is a foot bone of a small carnivore, about two metres long, with hooked ridge to which a muscle attaches, resembling that of the South American Quilmesaurus and Aucasaurus. Another is the right foot bone from Sidi Daoui, from where a shin bone was found from a larger fossil, about five metres long.
“We’ve previously found a jawbone from a giant species, about eight or nine metres long, so we may have three different kinds of predators,” says Longrich.
