Torvosaurus

What it was like

Torvosaurus was a large, heavily built predator with a deep skull, long teeth, and unusually powerful, short arms for a theropod its size. It grew to about 10 meters (33 feet) long, making it one of the largest carnivores of its time.

Its body was built more for strength than speed, and its bite was likely powerful enough to tackle large plant eaters. It is closely related to Megalosaurus, and both belong to a group of large-bodied Jurassic predators.

Its world

Torvosaurus lived from about 162 to 143 million years ago, spanning the Late Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. Its fossils have been found in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah in the United States, as well as in Portugal and Uruguay, with possible finds also reported from Germany and Tanzania.

It hunted alongside the smaller predator Ceratosaurus and the larger Allosaurus, in a landscape shared with plated Stegosaurus and Dacentrurus and long-necked giants such as Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Apatosaurus.

How it was found

Galton and Jensen named Torvosaurus in 1979, from fossils found in the western United States. About 19 finds of the genus are known today, with the type species Torvosaurus tanneri found across several countries on two continents.