"Giant southern lizard"

Giganotosaurus

Late Cretaceous · 99.6–95 MyaCarnivoreArgentina (Patagonia)

One of the largest land predators ever known — a shark-toothed hunter from Patagonia that rivalled and may have slightly exceeded T. rex in length, though it was more lightly built. Its long, low skull carried blade-like serrated teeth suited to slicing rather than crushing, ideal for carving flesh from the giant sauropods that shared its floodplains.

Length
13 m
Height
3.6 m
Weight
8,000 kg
Top speed
40 km/h

Field notes

  • Its holotype skeleton, found in Patagonia in 1993, is almost 70% complete.
  • The elongated skull is around 1.6 metres long — even longer than that of T. rex.
  • Its brain was small and banana-shaped, a fraction of a tyrannosaur's relative size.
Meet the rest of the Carcharodontosauridae family →