As shown in the image above: Urubergosaurus was a dinosaur with "shark teeth" that lived in what is now Uzbekistan about 90 million years ago.
According to a new study of the jawbone of this giant beast, about 90 million years ago, a huge top predator, a carnivorous dinosaur with jagged teeth like sharks, lived in what is now Uzbekistan.
The 8-meter-long beast weighs 1,000 kilograms, longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. The researchers named it Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, named after Ulugh Beg. Uruberg was a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from present-day Uzbekistan.
As shown in the image above: This jawbone is the only fossil of Urubergosaurus that paleontologists have.
The jawbone was discovered in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in the collection of a museum in Uzbekistan.
As shown in the image above: This map shows that the Uluberg dragon fossil was found in Uzbekistan.
Part of the jawbone of Urubergosaurus is enough to indicate that the animal was a horned toothed dinosaur, or a "shark tooth" dinosaur. These carnivores were cousins and competitors of Tyrannosaurus rex, and Tyrannosaurus rex's most famous species was Tyrannosaurus rex.
Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary in Canada, said the two dinosaur taxa were fairly similar, but Ceratopsaurus was usually slimmer and lighter than stout tyrannosaurs. Still, horned toothed dragons were usually larger than tyrannosaurs, weighing more than 6,000 kilograms. Then, about 90 million to 80 million years ago, Ceratopsa disappeared and Tyrannosaurus rex grew larger, becoming the top predators in Asia and North America.
As shown in the image above: Two late Cretaceous dinosaurs were top predators: a horned toothed dragon (left) and a tyrannosaur (right).
The researchers note that this new discovery is the first type of horned toothedosaurus found in Central Asia. Paleontologists already know that Timolengia Tyrannosaurus lived at the same time and place, but it was 4 meters long and weighed about 170 kilograms, and Timurlengia Tyrannosaurus was several times smaller than Urubergosaurus, indicating that Urubergosaurus was the top predator of the ecosystem, devouring horned dinosaurs, and there were long-necked sauropods and ostrich-like dinosaurs nearby.
Kohei Tanaka, an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, said: "Our findings suggest that Horsiosaurus was still a major predator in Asia 90 million years ago. ”
Pictured above: Illustration of a giant Ulubergosaurus and a smaller Tyrannosaurus tyrannosaur.
Peter Makovicky, a professor of paleontology at the University of Minnesota in the United States, also believes that Ulubergolong is likely to be at the top of the local food chain. "I think the bone is too big, it could be a very large predatory dinosaur, probably the top predator in the ecosystem," he said. ”
As shown in the image above: The upper jaw and teeth of the Uluberg dragon were reconstructed.
The team says the Tyrannosaurus rex was the last to have lived together before the extinction of Urubergosaurus. The team found unique bony protrusions on the teeth of Urubergosaurus. However, it also had bony ridges on either side of its chin, similar to the 79.5 million-year-old Thanatotheristes degrootorum Tyrannosaurus from present-day Canada, a name meaning "Reaper of Death."
Pictured above: Japanese professor Yasuhira Tanaka (left) and Canadian professor Dara Zelenitsky (right).
Zelenitsky argues that it's unclear why both species have these ridge-like features, but this could be an example of convergent evolution, where species without close ties evolve similar traits.