Researchers found remnants of what may be the largest terrestrial predator of any kind discovered in Europe, according to a recent study Fox News reported.
Paleontologists Christophe Hendrickx and Octavio Mateus from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Museu da Lourinhã discovered a new dinosaur species, Torvosaurus gurneyi, in Portugal that is estimated to be up to 10 meters long and weighed four to five tons.
"It was indeed better not to cross the way of this large, carnivorous dinosaur," Hendrickx told Fox News. "Torvosaurus gurneyi was obviously a super predator feeding on large prey like herbivorous dinosaurs."
Hendrickx said T. gurneyi had a skull almost 4 feet long and boasted powerful jaws lined with blade-shaped teeth four inches long, which indicated that it may have been at the top of the food chain in the Iberian Peninsula roughly 150 million years ago.
Fossil evidences of closely related dinosaurs suggest that this large predator may have already been covered with proto-feathers, Hendrickx added.
"This is not the largest predatory dinosaur we know. Tyrannosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Giganotosaurus from the Cretaceous were bigger animals," Hendrickx said in a statement, referring to predators that appeared on Earth after the Jurassic period. "With a skull of 115 cm, Torvosaurus gurneyi was however one of the largest terrestrial carnivores at this epoch, and an active predator that hunted other large dinosaurs, as evidenced by blade shape teeth up to 10 cm."
Scientists discovered bones belonging to this dinosaur north of Lisbon. They were originally believed to beTorvosaurus tanneri, a dinosaur species from North America. Closer comparison of the shin bone, upper jawbone, teeth, and partial tail vertebrae suggest to the authors that it may warrant a new species name,Torvosaurus gurneyi.
