A dinosaur species that supposedly ruled the food chain 150 million years ago was recently discovered in Portugal, according to a study published this week.
The species is easily the largest land predator ever discovered in Europe, and one of the largest ever discovered around the globe from the Jurassic era, according to authors Christophe Hendrickx and Octavio Mateus of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Museu da Lourinha.
The species, called the Torvosaurus gurneyi, was a bipedal carnivore with blade-like teeth that measured over 4-inches long, according to the researchers.
Research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
"This was clearly a fierce predator," Mateus said to AFP. "Wherever he arrived, he was the owner and master. No one could rival Torvosaurus during the late Jurassic. This is the equivalent of T. rex but 80 million years before."
Torvosaurus gurneyi grew approximately 33 feet long and could weigh between 4 or 5 tones. Its skull was nearly four-feet long, which is smaller than the average T-rex size, but not by much, according to the study.
Scientists originally thought the fossils were that of a North American dinosaur, the Torvosaurus tanneri, but closer analysis of the bones showed the species evolved separately over a few million years.
Mateus said it's not going to be easy to differentiate the two, as there was likely differences in coloring or behavior that would have distinguished them from other species.
The tanneri species had over 11 or more teeth on its upper jaw, compared to the gurneyi species, which had fewer than 11 teeth, according to the study. Their mouth bones are structured and shaped differently.
"These things were living with giant plant-eating dinosaurs," or sauropods, University of Kansas paleontologist David Burnham, who was not involved in the research, said to AFP. "The blade-like teeth of Torvosaurus are particularly nasty since they would seem to indicate a slash-shred strategy."
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