Kemkemia

Kemkemia is a genus of theropod dinosaur living in the Cretaceous, described from a single fossil in 1999 recovered from Morocco by an Italian team searching for fossil invertebrates.

The type species, Kemkemia auditorei, was named and described in 2009 by Italian paleontologists Andrea Cau and Simone Maganuco and is based on a single distal caudal vertebra, MSNM V6408. This vertebra measures 60.48 mm in length and 33.81 mm in height.^[1] The genus name refers to the Kem Kem Beds and the specific name honours Italian paleontological illustrator Marco Auditore. The fossil dates from the Cenomanian.

The describers, because of the general morphology of the vertebra, especially the strongly developed neural spine, consider it likely that Kemkemia belongs to the Neoceratosauria, but in view of the limited remains have cautiously assigned it to a more general Neotheropoda incertae sedis. Comparable distal tail vertebrae have been found in Maastrichtian layers of India, probably belonging to the neoceratosaurian group of the Abelisauroidea.

Kemkemia was a predator with a body length of about four to five metres and, given that the vertebra is not very robust, possibly lightly built. The species length could be extrapolated because the specimen is that of an adult. It is the only known medium-sized theropod from the Kem Kem Beds that have produced the fossils of very large predatory species: Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Deltadromeus.

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