Ōtautahi – A university team has team of researchers has discovered a new huge, meat-eating dinosaur, dubbed meraxes gigas. The discovery provides insight about the evolution and anatomy of big, carnivorous dinosaurs.
The new dinosaur provides clues about the evolution and biology of dinosaurs such as the carcharodontosaurus and trannosaurus rex, specifically, why these animals had such big skulls and tiny arms.
The study has just been published in Current Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific biology journal.
The researchers initially discovered meraxes in Patagonia in 2012 and have spent the last several years extracting, preparing, and analysing the specimen.
The dinosaur is part of the carcharodontosauridae family, a group of giant carnivorous theropods that also includes giganotosaurus, one of the largest known meat-eating dinosaurs and one of the reptilian stars of the recently released movie Jurassic World: Dominion.
Though not the largest among carcharodontosaurids, meraxes was still an imposing animal measuring around 11 metres long from snout to tail tip and weighing approximately 4080 kilo.
The Argentine and US researchers recovered the meraxes from rocks that are around 90-95 million years old, alongside other dinosaurs including several long-necked sauropod specimens.
Meraxes is among the most complete carcharodontosaurid skeleton paleontologists have found yet in the southern hemisphere and includes nearly the entirety of the animal’s skull, hips, and both left and right arms and legs.
The discovery of this new carcharodontosaurid, the most complete up to now, gives us an
outstanding opportunity to learn about their systematics, paleobiology, and true size like never before.
With the statistical data that meraxes provided, the researchers found that large, mega-predatory dinosaurs in all three families of therapods grew in similar ways. As they evolved, their skulls grew larger and their arms progressively shortened.
The possible uses of the tiny forelimbs in t.rex and other large carnivorous dinosaurs have been the topic of much speculation and debate.
The researchers also found that carcharodontosaurids including species from Patagonia evolved very quickly, but then disappeared suddenly from the fossil record very soon after.
The meraxes and its relatives were evolving quite fast and yet within a few million years of being around, they disappeared, and we don’t know why. It’s one of these finds where researchers answer some questions, but it generates more questions for the future.
