An Abelisaur fossil recently analyzed has given researchers an idea of exactly how big the carnivorous dinosaurs could grow during their peak period some 95 million years ago,
according to a statement Monday from London's Imperial College.
In a study that was first published in the science journal Peer J, researchers said that the examination of a fossilized femur bone determined to be from an Abelisaur suggested that the creature may have grown to be nine meters (29.5 feet), weighing one or two tons.
Imperial College doctoral student Alessandro Chiarenza found the forgotten fossilized femur bone in a drawer at the Museum of Geology and Palaeontology in Palermo, Italy, the college said. Andrea Cau, a researcher from the University of Bologna, joined Chiarenza in examining the bone.
"This fossil find, along with the accumulated wealth of previous studies, is helping to solve the question of whether Abelisaurs may have co-existed with a range of other predators in the same region," Chiarenza said in the Imperial statement.
"Rather than sharing the same environment, which the jumbled up fossil records may be leading us to believe, we think these creatures probably lived far away from one another in different types of environments."
In the Peer J study's abstract, Chiarenza and Cau said that their research "confirms that abelisaurids had reached their largest body size in the 'middle Cretaceous,' and that large abelisaurids coexisted with other giant theropods in Africa."
R&D magazine wrote that the analyzed femur bone was originally found in a sedimentary outcrop in Morocco called the Kem Kem Beds and then donated to The G. Gemmellaro Geological Museum in 2005.
The Abelisauridae were a group of predatory, carnivorous dinosaurs identified by small forelimbs, a short deep face, small razor sharp teeth, and strong muscular hind limbs. The researchers now want to find more complete remains to better understand the creature's environment and evolutionary history, according to Imperial.
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