Afrovenator itself was a megalosaur (or allosaur or spinosaur, does anybody even know?) from mid-jurassic Africa, who was about thirty feet long, and was presumably a pretty nasty fellow.
No one knows when precisely humans first discovered the fossilized remains of dinosaurs. Indigenous North Americans probably came across them in places now called Alberta or South Dakota or Utah. In China, “dragon bones” were recorded as being discovered all the way back during the Western Jin Dynasty between 265 and 316 AD.
Megalosaurus isn’t a particularly awe inspiring animal as theropods go. It doesn’t have the strength and size of Tyrannosaurus, the bizarre adaptations of Spinosaurus, the horns of Carnotaurus, or even the rich fossil record of little ol’ Coelophysis.
History: 166 million years ago during the middle Jurassic a predator named Megalosaurus prowled England. In 1824 it became the first non-avian dinosaur to have a validly named genus. From there its popularity grew and became a widely known dinosaur celebrity. It received top billing at Crystal Palace Park where it was one of the three mascot dinosaurs.
It is a gray winter day in Jurassic England as the great reptile patrols the forest’s edge. The hunter’s stride seems sluggish at a glance – indeed, the weather is unusually cold this year, and most normal reptiles would have succumbed to the dismal temperatures already. The great hunter is no normal reptile, however.
We owe a lot of our pop dinosaur knowledge to books such as “The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs” by David Norman (et al.), written in the very late 1980’s and early 90’s, published by various publishers in many formats, like collectible magazines, all which often included a comprehensive list of dinosaurs from a-z, and from all over the world.
When it comes to large predatory theropods, it’s hard to figure out what exactly makes some genus/species popular while others not so. It’s not just the size or the active predatory lifestyle that propel certain species into stardom, in fact there are many equally large and fearsome theropods that despite seemingly having all the star quality, somehow languish in obscurity.Take the subject of our review today, Torvosaurus, a large apex theropod predator that despite having it all, even a catchy and easy to remember name, still ranks as one of those “obscure” names, failed to garner fame outside of the paleo world.
