Minqaria

MEANING: Duck beak

PERIOD: Late Cretaceous

CONTINENT: Africa

Minqaria is a lambeosaurine hadrosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco. Lambeosaurine hadrosaurs are mostly known from the northern continents of Europe, Asia, and North America. With a lack of known land bridge evidence from Europe in the Late Cretaceous, recent discoveries of Minquara and its very close kin in Northern Africa suggest they arrived via oceanic dispersal. Upon arriving from Europe, they diversified in competition with the Gondwanan herbivores, resulting in a smaller size than their northern relatives. As a result, Minqaria is estimated at around 3.5 m in length.

Abstract from paper: In the Late Cretaceous, northern and southern hemispheres evolved distinct dinosaurian faunas. Titanosaurians and abelisaurids dominated the Gondwanan continents; hadrosaurids, ceratopsians and tyrannosaurs dominated North America and Asia. Recently, a lambeosaurine hadrosaurid, Ajnabia odysseus, was reported from the late Maastrichtian phosphates of the Oulad Abdoun Basin Morocco, suggesting dispersal between Laurasia and Gondwana. Here we report new fossils from the phosphates of Morocco showing lambeosaurines achieved high diversity in the late Maastrichtian of North Africa. A skull represents a new dwarf lambeosaurine, Minqaria bata. Minqaria resembles Ajnabia odysseus in size, but differs in the ventrally positioned jugal facet and sinusoidal toothrow. The animal is small, ~ 3.5 m long, but the fused braincase shows it was mature. A humerus and a femur belong to larger hadrosaurids, ~ 6 m long, implying at least three species coexisted. The diversity of hadrosaurids in Europe and Africa suggests a dispersal-driven radiation, with lambeosaurines diversifying to take advantage of low ornithischian diversity. African lambeosaurines are small compared to North American and Asia hadrosaurids however, perhaps due to competition with titanosaurians. Hadrosaurids are unknown from eastern Africa, suggesting Moroccan hadrosaurids may be part of a distinct insular fauna, and represent an island radiation.

Minqaria is from the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago. It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin creta, "chalk", which is abundant in the latter half of the period.

The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct flora and fauna, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. The world was ice free, and forests extended to the poles. During this time, new groups of mammals and birds appeared. During the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants appeared and began to rapidly diversify, becoming the dominant group of plants across the Earth by the end of the Cretaceous, coincident with the decline and extinction of previously widespread gymnosperm groups.

The Cretaceous (along with the Mesozoic) ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a large mass extinction in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and large marine reptiles, died out. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the abrupt Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), a geologic signature associated with the mass extinction that lies between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras.

Minqaria is a hadrosaur. Hadrosaurs, casually known as duck-billed dinosaurs, are ornithischian dinosaurs that were common in the Late Cretaceous period. Hadrosaurs were among the most dominant herbivores in Asia and North America, and toward the end of the Cretaceous several lineages dispersed into Europe, Africa, and South America.

Hadrosaurs are known for the flat duck-bill appearance of their snouts. They also had teeth in the back of their mouths that were stacked into complex structures known as dental batteries. Some derived species had large impressive crests on their heads, likely used for sexual display and communication. They were facultative bipeds, meaning they could choose to locomote using only their hind legs, or on all fours, depending on the activity and speed with which they needed to move. The young of some species walked mostly on two legs, and the adults on four.