A fossilized femur bone of a dinosaur specimen has reminded researchers just how huge and fearsome these predators could get.
Researchers from Imperial College London in the United Kingdom have analyzed the femur believed to belong to an abelisaur, which lived on Earth about 95 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. The specimen may have been 29.5 feet long and up to two tons in weight, possibly making it one of the biggest ever detected.
Study author Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza said that smaller fossils of this dinosaur have been unearthed previously by experts, but theirs illustrate how astoundingly large the flesh eating predators had become.
"Their appearance may have looked a bit odd as they were probably covered in feathers with tiny, useless forelimbs, but make no mistake they were fearsome killers in their time," he said.
Abelisauridae dinosaurs are decidedly odd-looking with their extremely small forelimbs, short deep face, and even fluffy feathers, but they boast of large muscular hind limbs and razor-sharp teeth.
They are believed to have lived in North Africa, a savannah with rivers and mangroves that would have offered the dinosaurs an ideal ground for hunting large fish, crocodiles and even fellow dinosaurs.
The femur was retrieved from somewhere in Morocco named Kem Kem Beds, a location known for its abundance of dinosaur bones. Scientists have since been puzzled as to how abelisaurs and other carnivore dinosaurs coexisted in this outcrop without driving each other into extinction.
Now, researchers have suggested that the coexistence may altogether be an illusion, as the harsh geological conditions in the region may have "jumbled up" the fossil records and their chronology. The abelisaurs and their predator kin, after all, may not have possibly shared the quarters at the same period.
"[W]e think these creatures probably lived far away from one another in different types of environments," adds Chiarenza.
Similar research on Tunisian fossil beds, for example, showed that abelisaurs and related creatures acted as inland hunters, while spinosaurs and other predatory dinosaurs likely thrived near rivers and mangroves.
While unearthed quite a long time ago, the fossilized femur was rediscovered only recently after it sat in a museum drawer for decades, affirming renowned paleontologist Stephen Gould's hunch that the greatest discoveries sometimes take place in museum drawers.
The findings were discussed in the journal PeerJ.
Dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years now, yet they continue to pique the interest of people worldwide. A recent study from the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, for instance, predicts that technology could in fact be advanced enough to bring these creatures back from extinction.
Gene technology as well as selective breeding methods is thought to help give extinct species' living counterparts the defining qualities of their ancestors.
