Morocco has been home to several dinosaur and reptile related discoveries in recent years.
Rabat – Scientists have discovered three new species of flying reptiles that lived in the Moroccan Sahara 100 million years ago, the Guardian reported.
A paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth, David Martill, along with a team of researchers from Morocco and the US discovered the new species, confirming the existence of a community of pterosaurs in modern-day Morocco during the Cretaceous period.
The Cretaceous period falls between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago, during the end of the Mesozoic Era and following the Jurassic period, which ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs, except for birds.
“The new finds show that African pterosaurs were quite similar to those found on other continents,” said a spokesperson from Portsmouth University, quoted by the Guardian. “Large pterosaurs such as these would have been able to forage over vast distances, similar to present-day birds such as condors and albatrosses.”
Professor Martill expressed full satisfaction with the discovery, remarking that paleontologists are living in a “golden age” of discovery.
“This year alone we have discovered three new species and we are only into March,” he said.
In the last few years, Morocco has been the site of several significant paleontological finds, including the discovery of flesh-eating dinosaur tracks in 2019.
In 2019, paleontologists also discovered the oldest ever stegosaur bones in Morocco.
Non-dinosaur related discoveries include recent finds in March, when scientists discovered a 7,000-year-old human meal in a cave near Casablanca.
The cave, called the Rhinoceros Grotto, was a living space for early humans and is now home to the earliest recorded evidence in Africa of on-site meat processing.
