Scientists Unearth Remains Of A Predatory Dinosaur In ...( ition is just one of many reasons the s...)

ition is just one of many reasons the scientists are excited about their find, Sampson says. Perhaps of even greater importance is the animal's strong resemblance to a horned theropod called Carnotaurus, known only from Argentina. Both Majungatholus and Carnotaurus belong to the dinosaur family Abelisauridae, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period. Previously, members of this family have been found only in India and South America.

The occurrence of such closely related dinosaurs on widely separated landmasses supports a new hypothesis for plate tectonics -- the theory that landmasses shift their relative positions as they move slowly across the face of the earth.

"Dinosaurs lived at a time when all of the continents were connected, so we can use them to test hypotheses about the timing of the break up of the Earth's continents," Sampson says. "Until now, people assumed continents split in a particular pattern, which included South America and Africa breaking away as one unit.

"If that is the case, we would expect the animals in South America and Africa to be more closely related. But this animal found in Madagascar -- an island off the southeast coast of Africa -- is more closely related to animals found half way around the world."

The researchers suspect that a land connection composed largely of Antarctica may have existed between South America and Madagascar during much of the Cretaceous period, allowing dinosaurs to travel the great distances between these areas.

"One might predict that Antarctica, and possibly Africa, would be a good place to look for more abelisaurids," Witmer says.

Majungatholus was originally named for an isolated skull fragment thought to belong to a pachycephalosaur, or "dome-headed" dinosaur. But this new skull clearly shows that Majungatholus wasn't the veggie-eater scientists had long believed, but was instead a carnivorous theropod and distant cousin to Tyran
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Contact: Kelli Whitlock
kwhitlock1@ohiou.edu
740-593-0383
Ohio University
15-May-1998

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