Turns out the ferocious types of dinosaurs you learned about in children’s books weren’t the most common types in the Cretaceous period; just the only ones anyone bothered to dig up.
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In fact, the modern conceit of the dinosaur is skewed towards those found in a few tiny corners of the Northern Hemisphere and during the Triassic and Jurrasic geological periods, according to the NEW SCIENTIST. Hence, dinos in the southern hemisphere and some which emerged in the later Cretaceous period have gone almost entirely undiscovered — with the notable exception of the Giganotosaurus which was discovered in 1995 Argentina and which unseated T-Rex as the presumptive largest dinosaur ever. Scientists say southern, Cretaceous-era dinos lasted 50 million years longer than their northern counterparts, and “evolved” into bigger, dumber, and more primitive beasts.
Hold on to your (outdated) copy of Jurassic Park, there’s a whole other hemisphere full of monsters to be dug up.
