New dino 'links major landmasses'

[Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>]

New dino 'links major landmasses' 

A cache of dinosaurs discovered in Niger may challenge our understanding of
continental formation, US scientists have claimed this week. 
One of the dinosaurs - Rugops - was a wrinkle-faced carnivore, which lived about
95 million years ago. 

Rugops had relations in South America, indicating Africa became a separate
continent later than thought, some researchers believe. 

The work is detailed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 

First winkle face 
Working in an area of the Sahara no bigger than a football pitch, Professor
Sereno and his team, from the University of Chicago, dug up more dinosaurs from
the late Cretaceous eriod, than the total found in Africa before. 

"It was like the Valley of the Kings," said Professor Sereno, "Except the kings
were dinosaurs." 

This week Professor Sereno unveiled models of some of the dinosaurs he found,
during his expedition to Niger four years ago. The most significant of these was
the skull of Rugops primus , a peculiar looking meat-eating dinosaur. 

Professor Sereno says the find is a key piece of evidence supporting his theory
that Africa broke off from the rest of the super-continent Gondwana only about
100 million years ago, rather than over 120 million years ago, as scientists
previously believed. 

Rugops , whose name means "first wrinkle face", was a carnivore about nine
metres (30 feet) long with sharp teeth and a snout probably adapted for
scavenging carrion. 

The most interesting thing about Rugops is its ancestry, according to Professor
Sereno. 


Rugop s belonged to a group of southern dinosaurs called abelisaurids. Before
Professor Sereno's discovery, abelisaurids from the same period had been found
in South America, Madagascar and India, but not Africa. 
Along with evidence from the sea floor, the bones of the winkle-faced dinosaur
suggest that narrow land bridges continued to link the southern continents as
recently as 95 million years ago, Professor Sereno believes. 

Professor Sereno said: "You cannot have very close counterparts on the other
continents unless there was traffic." 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/3770259.stm

Published: 2004/06/02 14:21:14 GMT