CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fossils from two newly discovered meat-eating dinosaurs that lived in the Sahara Desert 110 million years ago paint a fearsome picture of life in Africa's Cretaceous period, which appears to have been teeming with unusual carnivores.I am very grateful to be living in the Holocene Epoch, thank you very much.
University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno unearthed Kryptops palaios, a short-snouted, hyena-like beast, and Eocarcharia dinops, a shark-toothed, bony-browed killer in a 2000 expedition.
Both were about 25 feet in length -- and on the prowl for meat.
"These are two of three that we dug up. To have three large predators in this area is really extraordinary," said Sereno, who describes the dinosaurs in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
[snip]
Sereno said the animals lived in the southern landmass that was known as Gondwana, where distinctive meat-eaters arose, many of which bear no likeness to the better-known North American predator of the time, Tyrannosaurus rex.
[snip]
Kryptops was a scavenger and had a uniform series of relatively pointy teeth and a short snout. "The idea was that the animal was sticking its head into carcasses," he said.
Eocarcharia, or "dawn shark," is known for its blade shaped teeth and bony brow.
"The teeth are very narrow side-to-side. They are blade-shaped for cutting. This animal specialized in capturing live prey and severing limbs. It was definitely a sabotage attacker, waiting for an opportunity to jump at something," Sereno said.
Eocarcharia and members of the group carcharodontosaurids gave rise to the biggest predators on southern continents, matching or exceeding Tyrannosaurus in size.
Sereno said the fossils epitomize the split world of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period, which occurred because the continents began to drift apart.
"There is nothing quite like it in North America Cretaceous because after a few fits and starts, the tyrannosaur came into being and they are often alone as the large predatory dinosaur."
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Noah had to use duct tape to get this one on the ark
I suppose this one ate coconuts as well?
Labels:
Africa,
Cretaceous Period,
Dinosaurs,
Evolution,
Paleontology,
Science
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15 comments:
No dinosaurs on the ark, sorry, too big to fit. They all drowned, I guess.
Maybe Noah made a raft for incorrigible animals...
It must have sunk, because have you seen any dinosaurs lately?
um... /looks around ...
no ....
/has brilliant idea
THAT'S why the dinosaurs are found in the layers of soil! Their raft sank!
(Tell me again why Noah had to have dinosaurs on the Ark? I'm running out of explanations...)
Yeah, that's what Noah must have thought, how am I supposed to fit those things? And he had only a specified number of square cubits to work with, you know.
Why weren't the dinosaurs running about in the Bible? They'd be kind of obvious.
Well, one of their descendents was the dove, which was a pretty big player in the whole Noah story.
Nonsense. All animals that have been on earth have been unchanged since the Garden of Eden. Ignore all evidence otherwise! Don't look! Stop that! Fossils are just a temptation for you to believe in science which obviously is Satanic except for medicine which helps and maybe technology which we use and a little bit of math but everything else challenges the Holy Word and should be totally not trusted because scientists are sneaky and talk about evolution which can't happen if the world is only 6000 years old.....
Let me untangle my limbs here and locate my head...
Look, Noah came around a few years later than that, when there was a flood and stuff. Some things died in the flood.
Sorry, that failed to be funny. I'm running out of steam on this one.
Lol... I agree. The hilarity is seeing the people actually struggle to fit the square peg into the round hole... making the damned facts fit the theory if it kills them.
Bumpersticker I have driven behind: The Good Books Says So, I Believe It, and That's That.
Must be odd to live in such a monochromatic world....
There are fundamentalists of every stripe, including adherents of scientific theories. Science is a method, not an end result.
Exactly. I am mocking the desire for the inflexible truth in the face of an variable world, which I recognize even in myself.
Rigidity is dangerous and should be resisted ... rigidly.
Better to bend like a reed, or even better, perhaps, be like water. Water wears away everything else, in time.
Speaking of which, I have a red sea to part soon... HDNW12C. That will not make sense to you now.
Uh oh.../runs over to Cannablog to see..
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