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Fossil Reveals First Evidence of Abelisaurid Dinosaurs Found in Bahariya Oasis
Carnivorous Dinosaur Group Known for Bulldog-like Faces, Tiny Arms, and Small Teeth
[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania] — An Egyptian-American team of researchers has announced the discovery of a new kind of large-bodied meat-eating dinosaur, or theropod, from a celebrated fossil site in Egypt’s Sahara Desert. The fossil of a still-unnamed species provides the first known record of the abelisaurid group of theropods from the Bahariya Formation, a rock unit in the Bahariya Oasis that dates to the middle Cretaceous Era (approximately 98 million years ago). In the early 20th century, this locality famously yielded the original specimens of a host of remarkable dinosaurs—including the colossal sail-backed fish-eater Spinosaurus—which were then destroyed in World War II. Abelisaurid fossils had previously been found in Europe and in many of today’s Southern Hemisphere continents, but never before from the Bahariya Formation. The team describes the Bahariya abelisaurid discovery in a paper published today in Royal Society Open Science.
The study was led by Belal Salem of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP) in Mansoura, Egypt, who is also a graduate student at Ohio University and a faculty member at Benha University. The research team also included Dr. Matt Lamanna, Mary R. Dawson Associate Curator and Head of Vertebrate Paleontology and lead dinosaur specialist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH); Dr. Patrick O’Connor, Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Ohio University; Sanaa El-Sayed, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and the MUVP’s former vice director; Dr. Hesham Sallam, a professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and Mansoura University and the founding director of the MUVP; and additional colleagues from Benha University and the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency. CMNH Vertebrate Paleontology Scientific Illustrator Andrew McAfee produced or assisted with most of the illustrations in the paper.