Carcharodontosaurus << CAR car oh dont toh SAWR uhs >> was a giant meat-eating dinosaur. The name means shark-toothed reptile. It refers to the blade-shaped, serrated (saw-edged) teeth this dinosaur possessed. Carcharodontosaurus is known from fossils discovered in North Africa. It lived during the middle of the Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago.
Carcharodontosaurus ranks as one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs. It had a body length likely exceeding 40 feet (12 meters). The skull alone was over 5 feet (1.5 meters) long, comparable in size to the skull of Tyrannosaurus. The blade-shaped serrated teeth, up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) long, were used to slice through flesh. Carcharodontosaurus probably preyed on large plant eating dinosaurs. It shared its habitat with several other giant predators, including the semiaquatic Spinosaurus.
French scientists first discovered isolated fossil teeth of Carcharodontosaurus in the 1920’s in Algeria. They thought the fossils represented a new species of Megalosaurus, one of the first dinosaurs recognized by scientists. More complete remains, including skull and leg bones, were later uncovered by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach in Egypt. He recognized that the fossils were different from Megalosaurus and other dinosaurs. Stromer renamed the dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus saharicus. The fossils were stored in a museum in Munich, Germany.
Stromer’s fossils were destroyed when Munich was bombed during World War II (1939-1945), and the isolated teeth were lost. In the mid-1990’s, new Carcharodontosaurus fossils were discovered in Morocco and other locations in North Africa. These finds suggest that this large predator (hunting animal) ranged across all of North Africa. Fossil remains of close relatives of Carcharodontosaurus, including Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus, were discovered in South America in the 1990’s. The South American specimens are known from more complete skeletons, providing important insights into the anatomy of this group of dinosaurs.
Scientists classify Carcharodontosaurus with other meat-eating dinosaurs in a large group known as theropods. These animals make up one of two main groups of saurischian (lizard-hipped) dinosaurs. Saurischians include such famous dinosaurs as Tyrannosaurus, and Velociraptor. Although Carcharodontosaurus is classified in the same main group as Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, it was not closely related to them.
