Popular Mechanics
by DAISY HERNANDEZ
Mega fauna would create mega problems for any unlucky time traveler.
- In a new paper, researchers pinpoint what may have been the “most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth.”
- Researchers analyzed fossils from the Kem Kem beds in southeastern Morocco and found that the area used to be home to some ferocious creatures.
100 million years ago, Earth was a terrifying place. That’s according to a new paper in ZooKeys, which analyzed fossils from an area in southeastern Morocco also known as the Kem Kem beds. It was here that prehistoric animals such as “cartilaginous and bony fishes, turtles, crocodyliforms, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs” used to freely roam and hunt.
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These creatures might not sound like anything out of the ordinary, but the local fauna also tended to be quite massive and ferocious. A news release reveals that among some of the fossils analyzed were “three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known.” They included the sabre-toothed Carcharodontosaurus saharicus, Deltadromeus agilis (a quick-moving raptor), and “crocodile-like hunters.”
Deltadromeus was a carnivorous theropod.
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