Skull shows continental clues

2004-06-02 11:01

Chicago - The discovery of a dinosaur fossil in the African Sahara suggests that the continental drift that separated Africa from other continents occurred more recently than previously thought, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Palaeontologists who unearthed the dinosaur skull from the Niger desert say the find indicates that the landmasses of Africa, South America, India and Madagascar were connected in some form until about 100 million years ago - some 20 million years later than previously thought.

Until now the assumption was the fragmentation of the single supercontinent known as Gondwana, and comprising modern-day South America, Africa, Antartica, India and Australia, occurred about 120 million years ago.

But the discovery of the 95-million-year-old dinosaur fossils in Niger, similar to dinosaur fossils recovered from Patagonia in Argentina, and Madgascar, contradicts that theory.

"It strongly suggests there was traffic across a narrow land bridge that connected modern-day Brazil to West Africa," said University of Chicago palaeontologist Paul Sereno.

"We have a dinosaur here that provides the missing link between South America and Africa."

Sereno said the skull belonged to a meat-eating, wrinkly-faced dinosaur from the abelisaurid family which until now was virtually unknown in Africa.

The dinosaur, with a short round snout and small delicate teeth, lived by scavenging - using its head to pick at carrion rather than fighting animals for other food.

The Rugops primus, as the researchers have dubbed it, would have roamed the land in the late Cretaceous Period when this part of Africa was characterised by broad rivers and lush plains.

Sereno, a renowned dinosaur-hunter, and colleagues from the universities of Chicago and Michigan uncovered the skull during an expedition to Niger in 2000.

A paper documenting their discovery will appear in Wednesday's edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences.

- AFP