'Death's Embrace' Reveals Australia's Upside-Down Dinosaur World

(NLDO) - The new discovery of two ferocious dinosaur species in Australia, including the species nicknamed "Hug of Death", has left scientists baffled.

Researchers in Australia have discovered fossils of two giant predators that lived together in a way that upsets previous sketches of how dinosaur ecosystems functioned 120 million years ago, Live Science reports.

The first species is the largest Megaraptor ever found, identified as the top of the Cretaceous food chain in this area.

Megaraptor (right) and Carcharodontosaur dinosaurs once existed together in what is now South Australia, with reversed roles in the ecosystem - Graphic image: VICTORIA MUSEUM

Paleontologist Jake Kotevski from Museums Victoria and Monash University (Australia) said this dinosaur lineage was called "Death Hug" because of the way they hunted with their muscular forelimbs.

This 6-7 m long dinosaur literally gave its prey a death hug before devouring it.

They lived in the ecosystems of Australia and South America, two continents that were once connected by Antarctica, forming an ancient southern supercontinent of the planet called Gondwana.

The second dinosaur was a Carcharodontosaur, also a formidable carnivorous monster.

Carcharodontosaur fossils in Australia reveal something odd: It was just 4 meters long, significantly shorter than its close South American relatives, which reached up to 13 meters long.

So the scientists concluded that Australia had what they described as a “reversed dinosaur ecosystem.” This is because Carcharodontosaurs and Megaraptors had switched roles in this particular region.

Carcharodontosaurs did not maintain the giant size they had elsewhere, so instead of becoming "kings of the jungle" like in the Cretaceous forests of South America, Carcharodontosaurs here were only secondary predators.

Meanwhile, Megaraptor was at the top of the food chain.

The fossils were found in the upper Strzelecki Rocks on the Victoria coast of South Australia.

During the Cretaceous period, the area was the shore of a large river, comparable to the Ganges or the Amazon today. But geological processes caused the river to disappear completely.

Today, South Australia is quite cold due to its proximity to Antarctica, but during the Cretaceous period the climate was much warmer. As a result, these two fearsome predators lived in an environment rich with flora and fauna, enough to coexist.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/cai-om-tu-than-tiet-lo-the-gioi-khung-long-dao-nguoc-o-uc-196250228095809145.htm