Huge 'bulldog-faced' dinosaur with tiny arms found in Egypt, say researchers

In the world of dinosaurs, there is a new entry in the form of a bulldog-faced creature. It used to roam in the Sahara Desert around 98 million years ago. This bizarre-looking dinosaur had tiny arms and was as big as a school bus. It has been found in Egypt, the scientists said. At the Bahariya Oasis in Western Desert of Egypt, a vertebra bone of the yet-to-be named dinosaur species was unearthed by experts, as per media reports.

The meat-eating creature seems to have had two legs, small teeth and short arms, the researchers said. When it lived, it seemed to be around 20 feet (six metres) in length.This beast belongs to the lizard-like abelisaurid dinosaur family. It flourished during the Cretaceous period (145 to 66 million years ago). This was the final time period of the age of dinosaurs. They were mainly present in Patagonia and other areas of Gondwana.

Our new paper documents the discovery of a new kind of large-bodied meat-eating dinosaur from the #Spinosaurus type locality in Egypt’s Sahara Desert. The paper led by @BelalSa79969024 with @antarcticdinos @deeptimescience and others#SallamLab #ديناصور_هابيل_القاتل pic.twitter.com/VjqMKbgqhk — Hesham Sallam (@heshamsallam) June 8, 2022

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Gondwana was an ancient southern supercontinent. It is nowadays recognised as South America, Australia, Antarctica, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Peninsula.

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The abelisaurids used to look like T-Rex as they both had with tiny arms, unusually short and deep skulls. Abelisaurids also had huge jaws.The study was carried out by Belal Salem of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP) in Mansoura, Egypt. Salem is also a graduate student at Ohio University and a faculty member at Benha University.

"During the mid-Cretaceous, the Bahariya Oasis would've been one of the most terrifying places on the planet. How all these huge predators managed to coexist remains a mystery, though it's probably related to their having eaten different things, their having adapted to hunt different prey," said Salem.

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The discovery has been based on the vertebra bone from the base of the neck. It was found in a 2016 expedition to the Bahariya Oasis. "I've examined abelisaurid skeletons from Patagonia to Madagascar," said Patrick O'Connor of Ohio University, who was the co-author of the study.

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(With inputs from agencies)

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