Fossils of primitive cousins of T. rex that had short, bulldog snouts and even shorter arms have been discovered by scientists in Morocco. The two new dinosaur species belong to the Abelisauridae, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs that were counterparts to the tyrannosaurs of the Northern Hemisphere. They lived at the end of the Cretaceous period and show that dinosaurs were diverse in Africa just before their mass extinction by an asteroid 66 million years ago.
Two new species of dinosaur have been found from the end of the Cretaceous in Morocco, just outside of Casablanca. One species, found near the town of Sidi Daoui, is represented by a foot bone from a predator about two and a half meters (eight feet) long. The other, from nearby Sidi Chennane, is the shin bone of a carnivore that grew to around five meters (15 feet) in length.
Both were part of a family of primitive carnivorous dinosaurs known as abelisaurs, and lived alongside the much larger abelisaur Chenanisaurus barbaricus, showing that Morocco was home to diverse dinosaur species just before a giant asteroid struck at the end of the Cretaceous, ending the age of dinosaurs.
