Gars are an ancient group of ray-finned fish in the family Lepisosteidae. They comprise seven living species of fish in two genera that inhabit fresh, brackish, and occasionally marine waters of eastern North America, Central America and Cuba in the Caribbean, though extinct members of the family were more widespread. They are the only surviving members of the Ginglymodi, a clade of fish which first appeared during the Triassic, over 240 million years ago, and are one of only two surviving groups of holosteian fish, alongside the bowfins, which have a similar distribution.
Carcharodontosaurus is a genus of carnivorous theropod dinosaur that lived in North Africa from about 99 to 94 million years ago during the Albian and Cenomanian stages of the Late Cretaceous. Two teeth of the genus, now lost, were first described from Algeria by French paleontologists Charles Depéret and Justin Savornin as Megalosaurus saharicus. A partial skeleton was collected by crews of German paleontologist Ernst Stromer during a 1914 expedition to Egypt. Stromer did not report the Egyptian find until 1931, in which he dubbed the novel genus Carcharodontosaurus, making the type species C. saharicus. Unfortunately, this skeleton was destroyed during the Second World War. In 1995 a nearly complete skull of C. saharicus, the first well-preserved specimen to be found in almost a century, was discovered in the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco; it was designated the neotype in 1996. Fossils unearthed from the Echkar Formation of northern Niger were described and named as another species, C. iguidensis, in 2007.
Sigilmassasaurus is a possibly dubious genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived approximately 100 to 94 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now northern Africa. Named in 1996 by Canadian paleontologist Dale Russell, it contains a single species, Sigilmassasaurus brevicollis. The identity of the genus has been debated by scientists, with some considering its fossils to represent material from the closely related species Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, while others have classified it as a separate taxon, forming the clade Spinosaurini with Spinosaurus as its sister taxon.
Mawsonia is an extinct genus of prehistoric coelacanth fish. It is amongst the largest of all coelacanths, with one quadrate specimen possibly belonging to an individual measuring 5.3 metres in length. It lived in freshwater and brackish environments from the late Jurassic to the mid-Cretaceous of South America, eastern North America, and Africa. Mawsonia was first described by British paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward in 1907.
Mawsoniidae is an extinct family of prehistoric coelacanth fishes which lived during the Triassic to Cretaceous periods. Members of the family are distinguished from their sister group, the Latimeriidae by the presence of ossified ribs, a coarse rugose texture on the dermatocranium and cheek bones, the absence of the suboperculum and the spiracular, and reduction or loss of the descending process of the supratemporal. Mawsoniids are known from North America, Europe, South America, Africa, Madagascar and Asia. Unlike Latimeriidae, which are exclusively marine, Mawsoniidae were also native to freshwater and brackish environments. Mawsoniids represent among the youngest known coelacanths, with the youngest known remains of the freshwater genus Axelrodichthys from France and an indeterminate marine species from Morocco being from the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian, roughly equivalent in age to the youngest known fossils of latimeriids. Species of Mawsonia and Trachymetopon are known to have exceeded 5 metres in length, making them among the largest known bony fish to have ever existed.
The Kem Kem Group is a geological group in the Kem Kem region of eastern Morocco, whose strata date back to the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Its strata are subdivided into two geological formations, with the lower Ifezouane Formation and the upper Aoufous Formation, with the Gara Sbaa Formation and Douira Formation used in the southern Tafilalt region. It is exposed on an escarpment along the Algeria–Morocco border.
Atractosteus is a genus of gars in the family Lepisosteidae, with three species. The genus first appeared in the Campanian in the Late Cretaceous.
Alanqa is a genus of pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period of what is now the Kem Kem Beds of southeastern Morocco. The name Alanqa comes from the Arabic word العنقاءal-‘Anqā’, for a mythical bird of Arabian culture.
Sauroniops is a controversial genus of carnivorous basal carcharodontosaurid theropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous Gara Sbaa Formation, and possibly also the Kem Kem Formation, both of Morocco. The type, and currently only, species is S. platytholus.
Asteracanthus is an extinct genus of hybodontiform, known from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) to the Early Cretaceous (Valanginian).
Gualicho is a genus of theropod dinosaur. The type species is Gualicho shinyae. It lived in what is now northern Patagonia, on what was then a South American island continent split off from the supercontinent Gondwana. The fossils were found in the Huincul Formation, dating to the late Cenomanian-early Turonian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, around 91 million years ago.
Concavotectum is an extinct genus of tselfatiiforme bony fish that lived during the Cenomanian in Morocco and possibly Egypt. It was discovered and named in 2008 and is known from a single well preserved hand-sized skull and a few isolated vertebrae discovered in the Kem Kem Group. The type species, C. moroccensis, was named in 2008 and described in 2010. A possible second and third specimen, found in the Baharija Formation, consists of a 2 skulls and several vertebra, which were all destroyed on the night of 24-25 April 1940, during the Bombing of Munich in World War II. They are currently the holotype of the possible synonym Paranogmius.
Nizar Ibrahim is a German-Moroccan vertebrate paleontologist and comparative anatomist. He is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Ibrahim has led several expeditions to Africa's Sahara and is notable for his research on fossil vertebrates from the Kem Kem Group, including pterosaurs, crocodyliforms, and dinosaurs. In recent years, research led by Ibrahim radically changed ideas about the morphology and life habits of one of the largest predatory dinosaurs, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Ibrahim also has interests in bioinformatics and contributed to the NSF-funded Phenoscape project. He regularly engages with the public and is a speaker with the National Geographic Speakers Bureau.
Afrotapejara is an extinct genus of tapejarid pterosaur discovered in Morocco. The type species, Afrotapejara zouhri, was named and described in 2020. It was the first tapejarid discovered in Africa and the fourth pterosaur discovered in the Kem Kem Beds.
Apatorhamphus is an extinct genus of azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Kem Kem Group of Morocco. It might have been part of the Chaoyangopteridae. It is only known from a few snout fragments and it likely had a wingspan of between 3–7 metres (9.8–23.0 ft)
Leptostomia is a genus of long-beaked pterosaur from the mid-Cretaceous (?Albian-Cenomanian) of Morocco, North Africa. The type species is L. begaaensis, which was named and described in 2021 from sediments of the Kem Kem Group in Morocco. It was a small animal with a long, slender bill which is thought to have been used to probe sediments for worms and other invertebrates, similar to kiwi birds and curlews. Leptostomia is likely a member of the Azhdarchoidea.
Nicorhynchus is a genus of anhanguerid pterosaur from the Cretaceous period. It contains two species, the type species, N. capito, from the Cambridge Greensand of England, and N. fluviferox from the Kem Kem Group of Morocco. These species were previously assigned to Coloborhynchus.
Ginglymodi is a clade of ray-finned fish containing modern-day gars (Lepisosteidae) and their extinct relatives, including the family Lepidotidae and the orders Semionotiformes and Kyphosichthyiformes, and various other extinct taxa. Ginglymodi is one of the two major subgroups of the infraclass Holostei, the other one being Halecomorphi, which contains the bowfin and its fossil relatives.
Obaichthyidae is an extinct family of ginglymodian ray-finned fish that lived in what is now Africa and South America during the Cretaceous period. It was erected in 2010 by Lance Grande to include the genera Dentilepisosteus and Obaichthys. In 2012, it was defined as a stem-based taxon containing all taxa more closely related to Obaichthys than to the genera Lepisosteus, Pliodetes or Lepidotes.
Grandemarinus is an extinct genus of gar from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco. It contains a single species, G. gherisensis. The genus name honors evolutionary biologist Lance Grande and references the species' apparent marine nature, while the specific epithet references Oued Gheris, a wadi near the type locality.
