As The Associated Press (MSNBC) reports, the skull was found amid a wealth of dinosaur bones from the late Cretaceous period and came from a dinosaur Sereno named Rugops primus, or “first wrinkle face.” The meat-eater, around 30 feet (9 meters) long and 95 million years old, belonged to a group of southern dinosaurs called abelisaurids. Abelisaurids from that period had been found in South America, Madagascar and India, but never in Africa, supporting the theory that Africa split off first from the southern super-continent of Gondwana 120 million or more years ago.

The new fossil, however, and its close relation to a South American abelisaurid, indicate Africa was still connected to the other southern land masses, at least by a land bridge, 100 million years ago, Sereno and his co-authors said.