What was the most dangerous place on Earth?

100 million years ago, a large number of ferocious predators made the Sahara the most dangerous place that has ever existed on Earth.

Or that is, at least, what an international team of researchers maintains, which has just been published in the journal ZooKeys the largest review in nearly a hundred years of fossil vertebrates in an area of ​​Cretaceous rock formations in southeastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.

“The revision -says Nizam Ibrahim, from the University of Detroit and lead author of the work- provides a window into the age of Africa’s dinosaurs«.

About 100 million years ago, the entire region was a vast river system, teeming with countless aquatic and terrestrial species. The Kem Kem Group fossils include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, as well as specimens of Carcharodontosaurus saber-toothed beast, eight meters long, with huge jaws and long serrated teeth up to 20 cm, and Deltradomeusa member of the raptor family of about eight meters, with long and unusually thin lower limbs.

There were also various kinds of pterosaurs, predatory flying reptiles, and crocodile hunters. According to Ibrahim, “This was possibly the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human traveler would not have lasted long”.

Giant fish and sharks on Earth

According to David Martrill of the University of Porthsmouth and co-author of the study, “Many of the predators in that area depended on an abundant supply of fish. The place was full of absolutely huge fish, including giant coelacanths and lungfish. The coelacanth, for example, is about four or five times larger than current coelacanths. There is also a huge freshwater sawshark called Onchopristis, with its fearsome rostral teeth, like barbed daggers, yet beautifully shiny..

The researchers, from the universities of Detroit, Chicago, Montana, Portsmouth (UK). Leicester, Casablanca (Morocco), McGill (Canada) and the Natural History Museum in Paris have managed to put together the first detailed and fully illustrated account of the fossil-filled escarpment formerly known as “kem kem beds”which consists of two different formations, the Gara Sbaa and the Douira Formation.

To assemble the huge data sets and fossil images, Ibrahim studied the various collections of Kem Kem fossils that are spread across museums and laboratories on several continents. It is, according to Martrill “of the most complete work on fossil vertebrates of the Sahara in almost a century”.

A dangerous, wild and full of life place where, however, we would not have liked to have to walk…

Font: Jose Manuel Nieves / ABC

Reference article: https://www.abc.es/ciencia/abci-lugar-mas-peligroso-toda-historia-tierra-202004270859_noticia.html