page_title: Oxalaia
section_title: Habitat
hierarchical_section_title: Oxalaia / Palaeobiology / Habitat
caption_attribution_description: English: Generalized palaeogeographic locations of spinosaurids (white) during the Albian−Cenomanian. Nederlands: Wereldkaart met veralgemeende paleogeografische vindplaatsen van Spinosauridae (witte stippen) het Albiaan−Cenomaniaan. Met dank aan Ron Blakey (https://web.archive.org/web/20160810220004/http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/mollglobe.html), aangepast en updated door Bertin (2010).
context_page_description: Oxalaia was a large predatory dinosaur. It lived during the Upper Cretaceous of what is now Brazil, sometime between 100.5 to 93.9 million years ago. Oxalaia is known only from two bones of the skull, which were discovered in 1999. The animal was named in 2011 by a group of Brazilian palaeontologists.
  It was a member of the Spinosauridae family, a group of crocodile-like theropod dinosaurs. Like other spinosaurids, Oxalaia had a long nose or snout with jaws and teeth shaped to feed on fish. Oxalaia's habitat was tropical, an area of large forests around which were dry deserts. Oxalaia shared this environment with many other animals, most of which are also known from other Cretaceous fossils discovered in Africa.
context_section_description: Oxalaia is known from the Alcântara Formation, a geological formation in northeastern Brazil. This formation dates to the Upper Cretaceous Period, sometime between 100.5 to 93.9 million years ago. Back then, the environment of the formation had a wet climate. There were large tropical forests made of plants like conifer trees, ferns, and horsetails. These forests were surrounded by an arid, or dry, landscape.
  Oxalaia shared this habitat with many different kinds of animals. Other dinosaurs found in the formation included giant carnivores like Carcharodontosaurus, and perhaps Spinosaurus. Smaller predators lived there too, such as dromaeosaurids, and an animal very similar to Masiakasaurus. There were also large sauropods, a group of herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs. Fish found in the formation included bony fish, ray-finned fish, and lungfish. There were also giant coelacanths and sawfishes. Besides dinosaurs, there were other reptiles, like pterosaurs and crocodilians. Fossils of snakes and molluscs have also been found.
  The fauna from the Upper Cretaceous of Brazil is very similar to that of Morocco and Egypt during the same time period. This is because South America and Africa used to be connected, in a giant supercontinent called Gondwana.
caption: Map of Earth, 113 to 93.9 million years ago. The white dots are spinosaurid fossils dated to that time period
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