Fossils have been found of several types of abelisaur showing the diversity of dinosaurs in Morocco at the end of the Cretaceous period. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.
SciNews has a story about the discovery of a couple new dinosaurs in Morocco. The abelisaurs lived around 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. The paper was published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
The two new dinosaur species lived approximately 66 million years ago and had short, bulldog snouts and very short arms.
They belonged to Abelisauridae, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs that were counterparts to the tyrannosaurs of the northern hemisphere.
One of the species was about 2.5 m (8 feet) long and is represented by a fossilized foot bone found near the town of Sidi Daoui.
The other, from nearby Sidi Chennane, measured around 5 m (15 feet) in length and is represented by a shin bone.
“What’s surprising here is that these are marine beds,” said University of Bath paleontologist Nick Longrich.
“It’s a shallow, tropical sea full of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and sharks. It’s not exactly a place you’d expect to find a lot of dinosaurs. But we’re finding them.”
