One of the biggest flesh-eating dinosaurs ever to stalk the Earth has been discovered by a British student.
Bigger than a double decker bus and with razor sharp teeth the size of bananas, the seven-ton giant roamed the lush plains of the Sahara around 95 million years ago. The new species, Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, was discovered by Bristol University postgraduate student Steve Brusatte while working on an undergraduate degree in Chicago. Its fossilised remains were discovered alongside two other giant prehistoric predators, including the largest ever to walk the land, hunted for food and maybe even fought each other. Another monster – the 24 feet long Rugops – was also unearthed at the same site. Its name means “wrinkle face” and it too was a hunter.
The gigantic dinosaur would have dwarfed a T-Rex and would have weighed around 7 tones. The discovery of three rival giant carnivores in a real-life Jurassic Park has astonished fossil experts who say it could revolutionize the understanding of dinosaur behavior. Carcharodontosaurus species are extremely rare. One was found in Egypt in the 1920s, but was destroyed when Munich was bombed in the Second World War. A skull of another species was found in Morocco 10 years ago.
