Museums around the world are filled with stunning fossil displays
that show complete — or near-complete — specimens of creatures that
lived long, long ago. But finding fossils isn’t easy, and uncovering
complete skeletons is even harder, often leaving paleontologists with
only a handful of bones with which to identify an ancient animal.
That was the case for a team of scientists in Thailand who only
needed 22 bones to realize they had discovered an entirely new species
of carnivore. The animal, formally named Siamraptor suwati, was a fierce predator with teeth similar in design to sharks, and you definitely wouldn’t have wanted to get on its bad side.
The newly-discovered dino, which would have measured some 25 feet in
length, is part of a group of ancient predators called
carcharodontosaurids, which were notable for their large size and
dagger-like teeth. Like their close relatives in the allosaur family,
the animals would have been apex predators during their stint on Earth
in the Cretaceous period.
The discovery helps to fill in some gaps in the fossil record in
Southeast Asia, where these types of dinosaurs had not yet been
discovered. As National Geographic
notes, the Japan-Thailand Dinosaur Project had already discovered a
pair of new herbivore dinosaurs before uncovering the fossils of this
new predator.
The 22 fossils the team unearthed are believed to be
from at least four different individual animals. Each bone is like the
piece to a larger puzzle, telling researchers how large the creature was
and how closely it was related to other species. In this case, it
matches up well with other carcharodontosaurids, and the dating of the
bones told the scientists when this behemoth predator ruled the land.
The
scientists hope that the discovery of such an impressive ancient
predator will help jumpstart fossil hunting in the country, which isn’t
exactly a hotspot for paleontology.
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