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It belongs to the family of dinosaurs known as Carcharodontosaurs, best known for their shark teeth. Named Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, it was at least seven meters long and weighed over a ton (1,000 kilograms) and is believed to have roamed Central Asia around 90 million years ago.
The jawbone fossil was believed to have been unearthed in the 1980s and found its way to the State Geological Museum in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but its importance was not recognized until 2019, Darla Zelenitsky said, Associate Professor of Dinosaur Paleobiology at the University of Calgary in Canada.
Researchers from Canada, Japan and Uzbekistan named the new genus and new species Ulughbegsaurus (oo-LOOG-bek-SAW-rus) uzbekistanensis, after 15th-century mathematician and astronomer Ulugh Beg.
“Over 90 million years ago, the top predators of Asian and North American ecosystems were often large species of carcharodontosaurs known as shark-tooth dinosaurs, which were later replaced by large species. of tyrannosaurs, similar to T. rex, sometimes around 80 (million) to 90 million years old, “Zelenitsky said in a statement.
“These two groups of dinosaurs were meat eaters that had sharp teeth and walked on two legs, although tyrannosaurs, in general, were more heavily built.”
How tyrannosaurs evolved to replace carcharodontosaurs at the top of the food chain in these regions is not well understood due to an uneven fossil record for the early part of the Late Cretaceous around 80 to 100 million years ago. ‘years. Apex predators are generally less numerous than the animals they feed on, which could explain why their fossil remains are harder to find in some ancient ecosystems, Zelenitsky said.
Zelenitzky said that Ulughbegsaurus would have shared the ecosystem with a small species of tyrannosaurus called Timurlengia.
“All the evidence suggests that carcharodontosaur species outnumbered or ‘retained’ tyrannosaur species in ecosystems in Asia and possibly North America just before their extinction around 90 million years ago,” Zelenitsky said. in an email.
The extinction of carcharodontosaurs allowed tyrannosaur species to play the top predatory role in Asia and North America 80 to 90 million years ago. They persisted in large forms like T. rex until a massive asteroid hit Earth about 66 million years ago, dooming most dinosaurs to extinction.
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