The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World: The Definitive Dinosaur Encyclopedia with Stunning Illustrations, Embark on a Prehistoric Quest!

by Steve Brusatte

My family tree of carcharodontosaurs helped me unravel their evolution. First, it clarified where these colossal carnivores came from and how they rose to glory. They got their start in the Late Jurassic and are very close relatives of that most terrifying predator of the Jurassic, the Butcher itself, Allosaurus. In effect, they evolved from a legion of hypercarnivores that was already incumbent in the apex predator niche, and then they escalated things further by becoming larger, stronger, and fiercer when their ancestors went extinct at the end of the Jurassic, 145 million years ago, during that long night of environmental and climate change. Did they drive these other allosaurs to extinction or take advantage when they succumbed for other reasons? We don’t yet know the answer. In either event, the carcharodontosaurs found a way to usurp the place of their forebears and, as the Cretaceous dawned, the kingdom was now theirs. For the next 50 million years or so, deep into the middle Cretaceous, the carcharodontosaurs ruled the world.