Fossils of two newly discovered carnivorous dinosaurs have been found in Morocco. The animals lived at the end of the Cretaceous period just before the mass extinction event 66 million years ago, and show dinosaurs were diverse in Africa before going extinct.
Both predators belong to a primitive family known as abelisaurids. These dinosaurs were bipedal theropods with very short, vestigial arms (even shorter than Tyrannosaurus rex) and short bulldog-like snouts.
Among the most famous abelisaurids is the two-horned Carnotaurus which would have been about 8 metres in length.
While North America and east Asia were dominated by tyrannosaurine giant predators like T. rex and Tarbosaurus, abelisaurids were widespread across Africa, south Asia, Madagascar and South America.
One of the new Moroccan abelisaurids was found in Sidi Chennane, just outside Casablanca. It is known from a fossilised shin bone which suggests a medium-sized carnivore about 5 metres long.
The other was found at Sidi Daoui, also near Casablanca, but would have been much smaller at about 2.6 metres in length.
Both are described in a paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
The newly discovered dinosaurs lived alongside another abelisaurid first described in 2017. That animal, Chenanisaurus barbaricus, would have been larger than both, measuring up to 8 metres.