For a long time, paleontologists and dinosaur aficionados alike have debated what is the largest land-dwelling carnivore of all time. In the one particular corner, there’s Tyrannosaurus rex, the terror of prehistoric North The usa. In the other, Giganotosaurus — an equally massive dinosaur that stalked historical Patagonia, and one particular of the very last of an extraordinary lineage that ruled for tens of hundreds of thousands of a long time right before tyrannosaurs rose to prominence.
To paleontologists, Giganotosaurus and its relations are classified as carcharodontosaurs. Their name usually means “shark-toothed lizard,” proven by the discovery of Carcharodontosaurus alone in 1931. But even as experts name new species from the U.S., Europe, South The usa, Africa, and Asia, these momentous meat-eaters can never ever really seem to be to phase out of the shadow of tyrannosaurs. That is a shame. For hundreds of thousands of a long time, the situation was the other way about.
Place the Distinctions
Giganotosaurus skeleton mount at the Fernbank Museum of Natural Background in Atlanta, Ga. (Credit score: Jonathan Chen/Wikimedia Commons)
On the floor, one particular large, significant-toothed dinosaur could possibly seem to be the identical as a different. “If you just look at a Carcharodontosaurus, you could possibly consider it is a T. rex,” claims University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte. Both walked on two legs, experienced little arms and had been outfitted with effective jaws entire of menacing teeth. But, inspected additional carefully, these carnivores are really distinctive.
The teeth of T. rex, for illustration, are rather thick. Brusatte phone calls them “banana-shaped pegs.” But carcharodontosaurs received their name from teeth that had been thinner from side-to-side and arrived to a sharper place, far better for slicing flesh than pulverizing bone. Likewise, notes paleontologist Elena Cuesta, the skulls of carcharodontosaurs don’t have as lots of air pockets inside of — the shark-tooths’ skulls seem to be to be a very little more powerful, letting them deliver effective bites.
Some dissimilarities in the neck vertebrae, much too, point out that the shark-toothed hunters experienced a very little additional neck agility than T. rex, most likely using effective neck muscle tissues to assist place added power driving their chomps. This variance in agility extends to the common create of every dinosaur, much too. T. rex is a bulkier, heavier dinosaur that in all probability was not capable to go really so quick, though carcharodontosaurs have skulls and physique proportions that are a very little additional svelte and considerably less burly.
And though T. rex was a dinosaur suited to deliver bone-crushing bites and absolutely get aside carcasses, carcharodontosaurs could have been experts in having down and tearing aside the long-necked dinosaurs they lived alongside. These distinctive carnivorous patterns are on display screen amid animals even today, these as all those amongst noticed hyenas and lions.
Dueling Dinos
Concavenator corcovatus using its hump as a thermoregulatory system, absorbing daylight in the heat of a early morning dawn. (Credit score: Emily Willoughby/Wikimedia Commons)
Around time, both equally tyrannosaurs and carcharodontosaurs thrived in the Mesozoic entire world, but in a again-and-forth dance that performed out in excess of time and place. The earliest tyrannosaurs had been little, raptorlike animals that developed about one hundred sixty million a long time in the past. They lived underneath the toes of more substantial carnivores like Allosaurus, a stand-in for what the ancestors of carcharodontosaurs had been like. The shark-toothed dinosaurs, by distinction, continued the pattern of their allosaur ancestors and became the dominant carnivores in excess of much of the earth in the course of the Early Cretaceous.
To date, the earliest trace of the carcharodontosaurs will come from southeastern Romania. It is a tooth estimated to be additional than 132 million a long time previous, from the earliest component of the Cretaceous, and experienced beforehand been misidentified as that of a distinctive carnivorous dinosaur. The identical occurred to a additional finish discover in Inner Mongolia. Paleontologists experienced uncovered the bones of a massive carnivore that experienced anything of an identification disaster — some experts observed it as an allosaur, many others as a tyrannosaur, and some assumed it was a raptor. But in 2009, Brusatte and colleagues redescribed the fossil as the oldest definitive carcharodontosaur, which they identified as Shaochilong.
Other finds have stacked up in modern a long time. Some of these carnivores had been completely massive, with Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus being equivalent to Tyrannosaurus in dimension. Some had been scaled-down but bore bizarre ornaments. Acrocanthosaurus from the U.S., and Concavenator from Spain, bore elevated spines alongside their backs that supported sail-like buildings. No one particular is really sure why these ornaments developed. But one particular issue is obvious: These dinosaurs lived massive at a time when the ancestors of T. rex had been meek and little, and they could have significantly influenced the heritage of other carnivores.
“There was almost nothing inevitable about the rise of tyrannosaurs,” Brusatte claims. In truth, it would seem that the carcharodontosaurs held them again. Contemplate some modern finds from the desert of eastern Utah. Paleontologists just lately discovered a human-sized tyrannosaur named Moros from these rocks. At about the identical time, there roamed Siats — a carcharodontosaur about the dimension of a faculty bus. Right here, and in other locations about the entire world, the shark-toothed hunters took in excess of the large apex predator specialized niche first and retained other hunters out.
“It would seem like tyrannosaurs exploded to huge dimension only soon after the carcharodontosaurs went extinct, or became much considerably less common,” Brusatte claims.
The dominance of the carcharodontosaurs could have also confined the expansion of tyrannosaurs into the Southern Hemisphere. To date, the only evidence of these tyrants underneath the equator is a questionable fossil from Australia. It could be, Cuesta claims, that carcharodontosaurs and other massive predators — these as the strange, horned abelisaurids — could have prevented tyrannosaurs from gaining a claw hold. The picture could modify with new finds. “The fossil history is annoyingly patchy and incomplete,” Cuesta claims, but the present-day pattern suggests that tyrannosaurs necessary other massive carnivores to get out of the way right before they could get in excess of that part amongst 80 million and 66 million a long time in the past.
In spite of their significance to historical food stuff webs, although, paleontologists are really just acquiring to know these titanic hunters. They need to have hunted and fed in a distinctive way than tyrannosaurs — their skeletons make that obvious. But, Brusatte notes, “I’d really like to know if carcharodontosaurs really did hunt the colossal titanosaurian sauropods,” or enormous long-necked dinosaurs that occupied the identical habitats.
Even the massive dimension of these animals raises a secret: If carcharodontosaurs, tyrannosaurs, and some other theropods maxed out about the forty-foot mark, does this represent some sort of biological limit to how significant large carnivores can be? The tale stays in the bones, which tell the tale of some of the most monstrous predators of all time.