Carcharodontosaurids, the group to which Eocarcharia belongs, gave rise to the largest predators on southern continents, which were as big or bigger than T-rex. Unlike Kryptops, its teeth were more suited to attacking live prey and severing body parts. The other discovery is of a similar-sized contemporary, Eocarcharia dinops or ‘fierce-eyed dawn shark’, so called for its blade-shaped teeth and prominent bony eyebrow. Like later members of its group (abelisaurids) in South America and India, it had short, armoured jaws and small teeth, well designed for gobbling guts and gnawing carcasses. About 25 feet in length, Kryptops may have scavenged food in the manner of a hyena. One of the new dinosaurs is a short-snouted Kryptops palaios or ‘old hidden face’, so called for the horny covering on its snout. Sereno and Brusatte collaborated on describing the fossils in a paper published this week in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The fossils were discovered by Brusatte’s former research advisor at the University of Chicago, renowned palaeontologist and dinosaur hunter, Dr Paul Sereno. They are the earliest records of both major carnivore groups that would go on to dominate Africa, South America, and India during the next 50 million years (the Cretaceous period).’ ‘ For those of us who work on the dinosaurs of the southern continents, uncovering these fossils is like finding a Neanderthal relative to our own species. Steve Brusatte, who is studying for a MSc in earth sciences, said, The remains of two new 110-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaurs have been named by a student from Bristol University and his former professor from fossils dug up in the Sahara Desert.
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