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...
Comments
Post a Comment