Eocarcharia

dinosaur · Africa · mystery

Mixed-up monster. When scientists first found Eocarcharia's fossils in Niger in 2000, they thought all the bones belonged to one dinosaur. Later, they realized the bones actually came from at least two completely different types of predatory dinosaurs jumbled together.

Desert discovery. These bones were found in the Elrhaz Formation, buried in what is now the Sahara Desert in western Niger. The fossils are about 110 to 125 million years old, from the Early Cretaceous period when Africa was a very different place.

Spinosaur cousin. Some of Eocarcharia's bones likely belonged to a spinosaur like Suchomimus, a meat-eating dinosaur with a long crocodile-like snout and a sail of spines on its back. This makes it a relative of one of the strangest dinosaur families that ever existed.

Famous fossil hunter. Paul Sereno, an American paleontologist famous for discovering dinosaurs around the world, led the expedition that found these bones and helped describe them in 2008 along with scientist Steve Brusatte.

Fossil puzzle. Eocarcharia teaches us that sometimes what looks like one complete dinosaur is actually bones from different animals mixed together by time and the shifting sands of the desert.