Chenanisaurus

What it was like

Chenanisaurus was a large abelisaur, a predator with a short, deep snout and tiny arms. It is known only from part of a lower jaw and some teeth, which show a heavy, powerful bite.

Its world

It lived about 72 to 66 million years ago, at the very end of the Cretaceous, in what is now Morocco. Its fossils come from phosphate rocks laid down in a shallow sea, where bones of land animals sometimes washed out from the coast. It shared that coast with the small abelisaur Minqaria and the titanosaur Phosphatotitan.

How it was found

Longrich and colleagues named Chenanisaurus in 2017. The type species is Chenanisaurus barbaricus. It was one of the last large predators in Africa before the dinosaurs died out.