Palaeontology

'The most dangerous place in Earth's history'

By T.K. Randall
April 26, 2020

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) If you've watched any of the Jurassic Park movies then you should have a good idea of how impossible it would be to survive for any length of time on an island filled with predatory dinosaurs.

While the movies do take some liberties with regard to which dinosaur species would be living alongside one another in such an environment, palaeontologists from the University of Portsmouth, England, have identified a real-life equivalent - a region that, during the Cretaceous at least, would have been even deadlier than the dinosaur-filled islands seen in the movies.

Situated in southeastern Morocco in an area known as the Kem Kem Group, this deadly region was home to huge carnivorous bipedal dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs and crocodile-like reptiles.

Some of these beasts were among the largest ever to walk the face of the Earth."This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveler would not last very long," said study lead author Nizar Ibrahim.

One of the reasons this region was so popular with predators was its abundance of prey - especially fish which would have grown to absolutely gargantuan sizes.

"This place was filled with absolutely enormous fish, including giant coelacanths and lungfish," said co-author Professor David Martill. "The coelacanth, for example, is probably four or even five times large than today's coelacanth."

"There is an enormous freshwater saw shark called Onchopristis with the most fearsome of rostral teeth, they are like barbed daggers, but beautifully shiny."

Source: CNET.com

Tags: Dinosaur