Eustreptospondylus

What it was like

Eustreptospondylus was a two-legged meat eater about 7 meters (23 feet) long, a relative of Megalosaurus. The known skeleton seems to be a young animal, so adults were probably larger.

It had a long skull with sharp, curved teeth, short strong arms and a long tail.

Its world

It lived in the Middle Jurassic, about 165 to 162 million years ago, in what is now England. Europe was then a scatter of islands in a warm, shallow sea.

Its skeleton comes from the Oxford Clay, a rock laid down in that sea, so the animal probably washed out from a nearby shore. It shared its world with the stegosaur Loricatosaurus and the sauropod Cetiosauriscus.

How it was found

Walker named Eustreptospondylus in 1964, though the skeleton had been dug up long before and first placed in Megalosaurus. It is one of the most complete large meat eaters from Europe.