New Dinosaur Species Discovered in Morocco: Primitive T. Rex Cousins Shed Light on African Prehistory

A team of scientists led by Dr. Nick Longrich, from the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath (England), has discovered in Morocco fossils of primitive cousins of T.rex that had a short bulldog snout and even shorter arms, reports Cretaceous Research. The fossils were precisely discovered near Casablanca, around Sidi Daoui and Sidi Chennane: one species represented by a foot bone of a predator about two and a half meters (eight feet) long and another represented by the tibia of a carnivore that measured about five meters long. These two species, which were part of a family of primitive carnivorous dinosaurs known as abelisaurs, coexisted with the much larger abelisaur Chenanisaurus barbaricus, showing that Morocco was home to various species of dinosaurs just before the end of the Cretaceous in Africa and the subsequent disappearance of dinosaurs caused by an asteroid 66 million years ago.

Dr. Nick Longrich says he is surprised by this discovery. "What’s surprising here is that these are marine sediments," he said. "It’s a shallow tropical sea full of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and sharks. It’s not exactly where you’d expect to find a lot of dinosaurs. But we’re finding them." In addition to the abelisaurs, the researchers also discovered traces of Ajnabia, a small duck-billed dinosaur, a long-necked titanosaur and the gigantic abelisaur Chenanisaurus. "We also have other fossils, but they are currently under study. So we can’t say much about them, except that it was an incredibly diverse dinosaur fauna," added the scientist.

Academic debates have long focused on the extinction that led to the loss of about 90% of terrestrial species, including dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs and ammonites. The Moroccan discoveries suggest that dinosaurs were not in decline before the asteroid impact. "The late Cretaceous in western North America seems to definitely become less diverse at the end. [...] But that’s just a small part of the world. It’s not clear that you can generalize the dinosaurs of Wyoming and Montana to the whole world," explained Dr. Longrich. "When T. rex reigned as the megapredator in North America, the abelisaurs were at the top of the food chains in North Africa," said Nour-Eddine Jalil, professor at the Museum of Natural History and researcher at the Cadi Ayyad University in Morocco.