Dinosaur Faunas of Egypt—The Terrestrial Late Cretaceous Vertebrate Record

Abstract

Egypt has yielded some of the richest and most spectacular records of Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates from Africa. Certainly, the best-known and most diverse of these are the vertebrate assemblages of the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation (Cenomanian), which includes numerous different taxa of fishes, abundant remains of turtles and crocodyliforms, as well as several different theropod and sauropod dinosaurs. Originally discovered early in the twentieth century by famous German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach and fossil collector Richard Markgraf, most of the material has subsequently been destroyed during the Second World War. Aside from the high diversity, the Bahariya Formation also yielded some of the most bizarre and iconic dinosaurs such as the giant theropods Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus or the enormous sauropod Paralititan. Although the Bahariya Oasis has yielded by far the most diverse and extensive remains of Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates from Egypt, other localities from the Turonian, Campanian and Maastrichtian offer additional important—albeit much less complete—insights into the composition and evolution of African Late Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems. Some of these assemblages, especially the latest Cretaceous Quseir Formation, have just begun to reveal the richness and diversity of their vertebrate fauna, often with spectacular results, and certainly have the potential to yield further significant insights into the evolution of the Cretaceous life on land. In this chapter, we provide a summary of the terrestrial Mesozoic vertebrate record of Egypt and thus an overview of these remarkable dinosaur faunas.