A species of meat-eating dinosaur was the top predator of the dinosaurs. The tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, and carcharodontosaurs were included in these predator groups.
The apex predator of North America before dinosaurs went extinct was the tyrannosaurus rex. T. rex was one of many large, meat-eating dinosaurs that ruled the world for 130 million years.
Carcharodontosaurs and tyrannosaurs were the top predator species that evolved in North America and Asia. After tyrannosaurs replaced carcharodontosaurs as the top predator, the earlier part of the Cretaceous was ruled by carcharodontosaurs.
The tyrannosaur from Canada and the carcharodontosaur from Uzbekistan were discovered recently. I was involved in the study of both. There are some interesting parallels between these two discoveries.
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Both of the people who trained in my lab visited museums to look at fossils. The Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta., and the State Geological Museum in Uzbekistan were visited by Voris.
They thought the specimen they found was important. Both fossils were found in the same region and sat in the museum collections for at least a decade without much notice.
After many months of study, each of the fossils turned out to be a new species of meat-eating dinosaur. Each would have its own species name, and we would need to formally describe them.
The new tyrannosaur species is named after it's predatory role in the 80 million-year-old environment.
The carcharodontosaur species was named after a historical figure and early astronomer in Uzbekistan.
The two species are only known from a few skull bones. The upper and lower jaws are the most recognizable bones.
It was obvious from the jaws that both species were the same size. They were able to figure out their body size from the bones. The length of the average school bus is eight metres, but the two species would have been around eight metres long.
The two studies we did found that theThanatotheristes andUlughbegsaurus were the largest predator of their ecosystems. The previous absence of a large predatory species in either system was puzzling, as populations of large plant-eating dinosaurs would likely have grown unchecked.
Small predatory species were the most common from these environments. There was a small tyrannosaur species that was dwarfed by the large Ulughbegsaurus.
The last of its kind, the carcharodontosaur species went extinct around 90 million years ago. Their extinction left a hole in the North American and Asian ecosystems for new large predators to take over. The tyrannosaurs, which were knee-high to a carcharodontosaur for tens of millions of years prior, finally made their play.
The tyrannosaur species began to evolve towards a larger body size between 90 and 80 million years ago.
The 12 metres long tyrannosaurus rex is one of the larger tyrannosaur species. The mass extinction event wiped out the dinosaurs in the last 10 million years.
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