Southern Africa already has its fair share of pretty impressive predators . Panthera leo stalk through the bush , with child white sharks devour ocean lions , and honey badger , well they justdon’t give a shit who they take on . But 200 million years ago there was an even more formidable animal roaming the bushveld , as researchers have uncoveredevidence of a " mega - carnivore " dinosaur .
distinguish in the Maseru District of Lesotho , research worker find the footprints of a whale theropod that at some point during the early Jurassic wandered across the soft Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin or mud of an ancient watering muddle . The trackways , which are thought to be the largest theropod tracks ever discovered in Africa , measure in at 57 centimeters ( 22 inches ) long by 50 centimeters ( 20 inches ) wide , and are thought to belong to a all new coinage of dinosaur .
“ The latest discovery is very exciting and sheds new ignitor on the kind of carnivore that roamed what is now southern Africa,”saidthe University of Manchester ’s Dr Fabien Knoll , Centennial State - author of the report published inPLOS ONE . “ That ’s because it is the first evidence of an extremely large meat - eating animal tramp a landscape otherwise dominated by a variety of herbivorous , omnivorous and much little carnivorous dinosaurs . ”
“ It really would have been top of the food for thought chain , ” Dr Knoll continued .
The trace fossils , as footprints and trackways are know , have been used to describe the beast that leave behind them as a new species calledKayentapus ambrokholohali . The researchers can be fair certain that they do indeed go to a new species and not some other name dinosaur , because to put it only , there are no other do it theropod dinosaur from this region during this period of sentence that grew so large .
From the footprint , they are able to discern that the fauna that left them must have been a rather upset 9 metre ( 30 feet ) long and stand at around 3 meters ( 10 feet ) marvelous at the articulatio coxae . Up until now , it was call up that during the early Jurassic , theropod dinosaurs were much modest , and that it would n’t be for another 50 million years that they grew to the size of the more well - knownT. rex .
“ This throw it a significant find . Globally , these prominent tracks are very rare , ” carbon monoxide - writer Dr Lara Scisciosaid . “ There is only one other lie with site similar in age and sized track , which is in Poland . ”
The discovery helps to build a better prototype of what the environment was like in the southerly part ofGondwanaat this time , and what tearing critter other dinosaurs had to contend with .
