Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Giving of December. Aegyptosaurus

  Aegyptosaurus was a mid-sized sauropod dinosaur that is known to have lived in what is now Egypt from both sides of the early/late Cretaceous boundary.‭ ‬Unfortunately we only have the original descriptions of this‭ ‬dinosaur for study as the original fossils were destroyed along with the Munich museum during an allied bombing raid in World War II.‭ ‬Despite the lack of actual physical fossils that can be studied anew,‭ ‬Aegyptosaurus is perceived to have been a titanosaur,‭ ‬a‭ ‬member of a group of more advanced sauropods that rose to prominence during the Cretaceous.
       Aegyptosaurus may have been a prey species to large carcharodontosaurid theropods,‭ ‬perhaps even the Carcharodontosaurus genus itself.‭ ‬There is no direct proof of predator/prey interaction between these two,‭ ‬but fossils of both genera are present in the Baharîje Formation of Egypt.‭ ‬The smaller theropod Deltadromeus is also present and may have potentially been a threat to smaller juvenile Aegyptosaurus.‭ ‬Remains of the potentially colossal predator Spinosaurus are also present in the Baharîje Formation,‭ ‬though since modern interpretations of Spinosaurus perceive it to be a specialised predator of fish,‭ ‬it seems unlikely that‭ ‬Spinosaurus actively hunted dinosaurs like Aegyptosaurus,‭ ‬though of course scavenging them would still be a plausible option.

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