The Mighty Majungasaurus: Madagascar's Top Predator! #dinosaur #paleontology #prehistoric

Mighty Majungasaurus! 25’ long, 2,500+ lbs, a veritable killing machine that lived in Madagascar 70-66 mya. We sell the cast on our website, here it is reunited with some of its donor material! A % of the purchase price goes to Ankizy.org, a 501c3 charity that funds 4 schools and healthcare for 1,000 children that live near the fossil sites, saving lives and fossils, win-win! An #abelisaurid, it had a short bulldog-like skull and some of the tiniest arms of any #theropod #dinosaur. Despite their small size, they had four fingers and a well-developed shoulder. Bizarre! Majungasaurus is most closely related to #abelisaurs of India (#Rajasaurus, #Indosaurus) and not as close to #Rugops (Africa) or South America’s #Carnotaurus and #Abelisaurus. Madagascar’s Late #Cretaceous #dinosaur biodiversity reflects its ties to India. Madagascar is the 4th largest island and sits 250 miles off the eastern coast of #Africa, yet its wildlife comes from Asia as much as Africa. How? Geologic history. Madagascar sat on the plate between Africa and India. When those plates ripped apart around 150 million years ago, Madagascar stayed with the #India plate, and headed east. However, 90 million years ago, volcanism “melted” it off from the Indian plate (ah, plate tectonics, gotta love ‘em!), and it headed southwest, parallel with Africa but not touching it. Animals with African affinities swam/flew/floated across the straight or had descendants that lingered from the #Jurassic. Similarly, Asian animals swam/rafted/flew to the island or had descendants alive 90 million years ago. With almost no interaction from outside animals, evolution took wild and wooly paths seen nowhere else. One need look no further than #lemurs to see what island evolution can create. Lemurs reached the size of #gorillas (!), while others were massive tree climbers, many far larger than any lemur alive today. Unfortunately, people showed up around 2,500 years ago and promptly killed off most of the large taxa (like their 10’ tall birds :-() and then began slash-and-burn agriculture that destroyed upwards of 90% of the forests. Millions of years wiped out in a blink… #FossilCrates #cannibaldinosaur

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