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Creatures Of The Red Island

Spanish Translation

By Martha Pickerill

Paleontologist David Krause digs at one of 100 Madagascar fossil sites where his team works.

It was one of the weirdest-looking jawbones that dinosaur hunters had ever seen. A team of paleontologists was digging in a quarry on Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa where the red dirt is rich with fossils. The scientists found the lower jaw of an animal with sharp, hooked teeth that jutted forward. At first they weren't even sure that it was a dinosaur bone.

"To be honest, none of us had a clue what this animal was," expedition leader David Krause told TFK. "We thought it could be a crocodile or even a flying reptile-a pterosaur."

After several return trips to the "Great Red Island," Krause and his team put together more of the puzzle. Masiakasaurus knopfleri (Mah-shee-kah-sawr-us nawp-flair-ee) lived about 70 million years ago. It probably ate fish and insects that it speared with its big, bizarre teeth. It stood no more than six feet tall. Scott Sampson of the University of Utah and two of his team members announced the find in late January.

The newfound species' name comes from masiaka, which means vicious in Madagascar's language. The name knopfleri is the scientists' way of honoring rock guitarist Mark Knopfler. They had listened to his music while picking through layers of rock!

The discovery isn't just weird. Along with other fossils, it provides evidence that Africa, India, South America, Australia and Antarctica once formed a single supercontinent that later split to form today's continents. Scientists call the ancient continent Gondwana.

Linked By Bones
Vast oceans now separate the southern continents, as well as India and Madagascar. But these lands remain linked by the bones buried underground. Masiakasaurus' bones are similar to fossils from the same era that have been found in India and the South American country of Argentina.

The bones of another Madagascar fossil, the large meat-eating Majungatholus, seem closely related to those of a meat eater called Indosuchus, whose bones have been found in India. Skull bones of a group of mammal-like reptiles have been found both in Madagascar and South America.

With the discovery of Masiakasaurus, scientists are even more certain that dinosaurs and early mammals roamed together over the Gondwana supercontinent. When Gondwana broke apart to form the modern continents, the animal fossils were left behind. "This really supports the whole Gondwana concept," says dinosaur-evolution expert Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University.

Bright Red Pay Dirt
Madagascar is poor, but its fossils are precious to paleontologists. In 1999 a team from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, announced that it had found the oldest known dinosaur fossils-the 230-million-year-old bones of two plant eaters-on Madagascar. Others have found fossils of the earliest birds and pug-nosed, armor-plated ancestors of the crocodile.

Learning more about these ancient animals and what life was like in massive Gondwana during the dinosaur age is what keeps the scientists coming back each year to dig in the red dirt. "Contrary to popular opinion," says Sampson, "we still don't know everything about dinosaurs."

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