Carcharodontosauridae

Carcharodontosaurids
Temporal range: Late Jurassic–Late Cretaceous, 154–90 mya
Reconstructed skeleton of Tyrannotitan
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Class:
Sauropsida
Superorder:
Dinosauria
Order:
Saurischia
Infraorder:
Theropoda
Superfamily:
Allosauroidea
Family:
Carcharodontosauridae

The Carcharodontosauridae were a family of carnivorous theropod dinosaurs. They are a clade in the Carnosauria. Carcharodontosaurids included three of the most famous land predators ever known to science: Giganotosaurus, and Concavenator. All of these predators were smaller than the more popular Tyrannosaurus in size.

Evolution

Together with the spinosaurids, carcharodontosaurids were the largest predators in the early and middle Cretaceous throughout Gondwana. They were also in North America and Asia. Lesser-known carcharodontosaurs included Carcharodontosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.

Their ages range from 127 to 93 million years ago (mya). After that, they may have been replaced by the smaller abelisaurids in Gondwana and by tyrannosaurids in North America and Asia. If so, this faunal replacement occurred on a global scale.

However, some theropod teeth discovered in the late Cretaceous of Brazil, as well as a fragment of right maxilla appear to belong to carcharodontosaurids. This suggests the group survived until the latest Cretaceous.

In December 2011, Oliver Rauhut described a new genus and species of carcharodontosaurid from the Upper Jurassic during the late Kimmeridgian to earliest Tithonian, about 154–150 mya of southeastern Tanzania.

References

  1. ↑ Brusatte S. et al 2009. The first definitive carcharodontosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Asia and the delayed ascent of tyrannosaurids. Naturwissenschaften, doi:10.1007/s00114-009-0565-2 PMID 19488730
  2. ↑ Novas, de Valais, Vickers-Rich, and Rich. 2005. A large Cretaceous theropod from Patagonia, Argentina, and the evolution of carcharodontosaurids. Naturwissenschaften,
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ Carlos Roberto Candeiro, Philip Currie and Lílian Bergqvist (2012). "Theropod teeth from the Marília Formation (late Maastrichtian) at the Paleontological Site of Peirópolis in Minas Gerais State, Brazil". Revista Brasileira de Geociências. 42 (2): 323–330. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved 2014-04-23.