Researchers from Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP) in Egypt led a study describing a recently discovered new dinosaur species with a face of a bulldog. The meat-eating dinosaur is said to be a 20-foot (6-meter) bipedal and has tiny, stumpy arms.
MailOnline reported that experts have yet to name the new dinosaur, which they believe belonged to the abelisaurid clade that lived during the Cretaceous period and roamed the Sahara Desert roughly 98 million years ago.
Oldest Abelisauridae Fossil in North Africa
Belal Salem, the lead author of the study from MUVP, said that Bahariya Oasis would have been one of the most terrifying places on Earth during the Cretaceous period with all the huge predators co-existing, having adapted to hunt different prey.
The discovery is based on a well-preserved vertebra from the base of the neck they found in 2016 during an expedition to the Bahariya Oasis funded by the National Geographic Society. Scientists said it is the oldest known fossil of an abelisaurid dinosaur from northeastern Africa and offers new insight into the mid-Cretaceous.
These dinosaurs were carnivorous and roamed across the northern part of the African continent, including the Sahara Desert. Study co-author Patrick O'Connor said they could tell the fossils are from the abelisaurid dinosaur because its vertebrae are similar to previously discovered abelisaurid skeletons from Patagonia, Madagascar.
O'Connor, who works as a paleontologist at the Ohio University, said there is no doubt about the dinosaur's identity with all its distinctive abelisaurid bones.
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New Vertebra Holds Clues to Biodiversity of Dinosaurs in Africa
The new vertebra found is not the first dinosaur fossils discovered in the oasis. According to Earth.com, scientists found various dinosaur bones in the region during the early 20th century. Those fossils belonged to the colossal sail-backed fish-eating spinosaurus and other dinosaurs.
However, all the fossils they collected before World War II were destroyed during an Allied bombing incident in Munich in 1944. Study co-author Matthew Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, said that an oasis is a legendary place for paleontologists because it is where the first-known fossils of some of the most amazing dinosaurs in the world were found.
Although, those fossils have only existed in pictures in old books for three-quarters of a century. Researchers say that the new vertebra holds clues to the biodiversity of Cretaceous dinosaurs in Egypt and the entire northern Africa region.
They described in full their findings in the study titled "First definitive record of Abelisauridae (Theropoda: Ceratosauria) from the Cretaceous Bahariya Formation, Bahariya Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt," published in the Royal Society Open Science.
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