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A host of fierce predators, including predatory dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodile-like creatures, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth, according to a fossil analysis of sediments from the Cretaceous period in eastern Morocco.
The giant predatory dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus eyes a group of Elosuchus – hunters like crocodiles – near a corpse. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.
About 100 million years ago, the so-called Kem Kem beds were home to a vast river system, filled with many different species of aquatic and terrestrial animals.
The fossils of this formation include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, including Carcharodontosaurus and Deltadromeoas well as various pterosaurs and crocodile hunters.
“This was possibly the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time traveler would not last long,” said Dr. Nizar Ibrahim, a researcher at the University of Detroit Mercy and the University of Portsmouth.
“Many of the predators depended on an abundant supply of fish,” added Professor David Martill, a scientist at the University of Portsmouth.
“This place was full of absolutely huge fish, including the giant coelacanths and the lungfish. The coefficient, for example, is probably four or even five times greater than the current coefficient. “
“There is a huge freshwater saw shark called Onchopristis with the most fearsome rostral teeth, they are like barbed daggers, but beautifully brilliant. “
Paleontologists produced the first detailed and fully illustrated account of the Kem Kem beds.
The researchers now define this sedimentary package as the Kem Kem Group, which consists of two distinct formations, the Gara Sbaa Formation and the Douira Formation.
“This is the most comprehensive work on fossil vertebrates in the Sahara in almost a century, since the famous German paleontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach published his last major work in 1936,” said Professor Martill.
The research is described in an article in the magazine. ZooKeys.
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N. Ibrahim et al. 2020. Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco. ZooKeys 928: 1-216; doi: 10.3897 / zookeys.928.47517
