Ideas for the sauropods of Bahariya

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Hyrotrioskjan's avatar
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Two idea I want to share.

I'm still deep inside the four-dimensional matrix of northern Africa, especially the Bahariya formation. Since working on Jurassic Germany I always try to get a whole picture of an ecosystem, so I also read about the crocodiles, the invertebrates and even plants of this formation (many water-plants, inter alia a mangrove tree-fern) and of course the other dinosaurs.

Interestingly very little is known about the herbivores of this time at this place, most likely because there were not many of them (a observation also made in Kem Kem) ornithishia are even completely absent. But on the other side we have remains of giant Theropods like Spinosaurus, Charcharodontosaurs and Deltadromeus (which is a very controversial fellow). 
Spinosaurus was maybe a bit like a mixture of polar bear and heron, swimming from shore to shore and from mangrove island to mangrove island to hunt large fish in the shallow waters (or, how some assume, drifting motionless in deeper water until something tasty swims by). And how I showed already in my gallery, the waters of northen Africa were filled with fishes and other animals large enough to fill the stomach of even the largest spinosaurids.
The diet of Charcharo seems to be different, teeth, skull and body were more conservative, good to cut through flesh but not really helpful to grab fish. Here the sauropods of Bahariya comes into view, represented by two species, Aegyptosaurus (Stromer 1932) and Paralititan (Smith et. al. 2001) (and maybe also Rebbachisaurus).
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Aegyptorsaurus was a middle sized sauropod, maybe 16 m long while Paralititan was much bigger, maybe 26 m long giant. Both species are, though they were large (and large bones are more likely to be preserved) only represented by one specimen, and the Aegyptosaurs bones got lost during WWII. 
When we look at this graphic <da:thumb id="432578370"/> it becomes clear that Charachrodontosaurus was not larger than Aegaptosaurus but definitely a big danger for this sauropod. 
Of course we don't know for sure that Charcharo hunted these animals but when we look at the known fauna of Bahariya it becomes clear that there was not much else which would fit it's jaws. So the question is: how could Aegyptosaurus withstand such attacks. Because of the teeth I would suggest that Charcharo tried to cut large pieces of flesh out of the hides of its prey, stood back and waited for the next opportunity. One possibility would be to live in herds, and maybe Aegyptosaurus had osteoderms like some other titanosaurs which gave it a bit protection. Another thing which came into my mind is multi-species herding. Adult Paralititan were definitely too large to fear a Charcharodontosaurus, maybe even several of them. Like some modern herbivores Aegyptosaurus could walk together with their larger cousins to get protection. Thanks to the very different sizes (and maybe other attributes) both wouldn't rival much*.
It's also possible that sauropods like Aegyptosaurus were just seasonal guests of the Bahariya river systems. Maybe they migrated toward the north in the dry season when these regions still had enough water to feed Spinosaurus with fish.

On a side note I think it's also possible that Charcharodontosaurus sometimes used fish or crocodiles as a source of proteins. With so many aquatic creatures around it would be strange if not.


*Idea for Paleoartists, maybe Aegyptosaurus even looked similar to adult Paralititan


Well these are mymusings for the day, make of it what ever you want =)

All the best,

Joschua
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I personally think all the predators (large fish, marine reptiles, Spino, crocs, Carcharodontosaurus, Sauroniops, Deltadromeus (if valid), Bahariasaurus) were eating each other in Bahariya, Ecktar and Kem Kem because of the lack of sauropods and ornithopods. And everything was swimming due to the lack of dry land. 

So we have an ecosystem based almost entirely on intraguild predation.