u/Powerful_Gas_7833

Fun fact, Oklahoma is known to have possessed North America's biggest carnosaurs.

Carnosaurs is a term used to describe some theropod dinosaurs. More specifically it is a term used to describe allosauroid theropod dinosaurs. Unlike Tyrannosaurus in its kind which lie closer to birds on the theropod family tree, carnosaurs are more basal.

They as a theropod family used to be extremely widespread across the planet and before Tyrannosaurs became apex predators these were the apex predators on land. They were various different families within carnosauria, carcharodontosaurs the shark tooth lizards, allosaurids, metricanthosaurs,etc.

Oklahoma is home to the two biggest carnosaurs known to have lived in North America.

The first is Allosaurus anax. This was both the largest theropod of the Jurassic and among the largest theropods to have walked North America before Tyrannosaurus. Measuring up to 13 m in length and weighing over 7 tons it was the largest species of allosaurus. It lived at the end of the Morrison formations deposition, perhaps growing big when the other rival giant predators of the Morrison might have gotten extinct at this point. It belongs to allosaurids specifically.

The other giant is acrocanthosaurus. Acrocanthosaurus is a carcharodontosaur, distantly related to Allosaurus. It's name means high spine lizard because of the row of elongated neurospines on its back. The largest specimen measures 12 m in length and weighs up to seven tons.

Portuguese paleontology in the past few years has gained more and more attention. In only a few decades the late Jurassic of Portugal has come to rival the famous Morrison formation in terms of diversity.

One of the most important institutions in Portugal for this is the natural History society of Torres vedra. Also known as the shn in Portugal. It's an important non-profit institution.

It has a long financed Portuguese paleontology and houses thousands of specimens. They have plenty of cool discoveries and I've been given permission to share knowledge of a few. They have a giant diplodocid in their vault, likely one of Europe's biggest sauropods. There's a big 2-meter femur of a sauropod in their vault. They also recently found a very complete ankylosaur.

Unfortunately Portuguese paleontology is chronically underfunded. Because they're a relatively small country and yet they have such Rich rocks, there's simply more fossils than there is money available to pay for the research for them.

Please check out the shn's website and their Instagram page. Follow them, shout them out and donate a little bit to them if you can.

We need to help the sciences any way we can!

https://www.instagram.com/sociedadehistorianatural?igsh=dG43bm9wMXYzcG1o

https://www.shn.pt/en/projetos

All skeletals by Scott Hartman.

I deleted the original so I could replace it with this. I wanted to get rid of overly speculative size for torvosaurus and readjust the size of the Allosaurus since I miss estimated the first size

When it comes to the Giants of the Jurassic, the discourse is almost always been around the Morrison formation. In more recent years the lourinha formation has picked up steam. But Jurassic of Tanzania has been ignored for so long. Despite the fact that it's been critical to our all understanding of Jurassic dinosaurs for over a century now, it's hardly depicted much in Media. I can't think of a single major paleo documentary that's covered the formation and its animals. You might see some of them in children's books but you rarely see much focus on the formation itself. I think it's sad because the formation offers plenty of cool creatures.

I'm talking about the tendaguru formation. It represented a floodplain on the precipice of the vast gondwanan desert some 150 million years ago.

Like other Jurassic formations it has a variety of large theropods known from it. Unfortunately many of the large theropods are not validly named having been lumped into pre-existing wastebasket taxa. Former records of ceratosaurus, allosaurus and others were based off poor and unjustifiable referrals. Nonetheless large theropods still existed here. Indeterminate ceratosaurids, of the same family and closely related to ceratosaurus. They are represented by teeth and some vertebrae. Veterupristisaueus is a carcharodontosaur, one of the earliest of its kind. It was rather large already estimated at 10 m in length. This indicates that the shark tooth lizards already started out as large apex predators. An unnamed megalosaur is known from tendaguru, represented by fragmentary limit material and teeth. It was a large animal it's teeth are similar in size to the holotype of torvosaurus gurneyi and the specimen known as Elvis both of which were 10 m in length. Scaling the fibula and the kneecap from wiehenvenator, the tendaguru megalosaur was around 10 m in length. Abelisaurids of around 6 m in length are present in the formation. Elaphrosaurus is a 6 m long ceratosaurian, it's thought to have been an unusual vaguely gallimimus like theropod with a beak.

Kentrosaurus is the most famous stegosaur from the formation. It was about 5 m in length and while it wasn't big it was still formidable. It was brimming with spines including those on its shoulder. Dysalotosaurus is a small dinosaur closely related to dryosaurus. It's not well known but it is the center of many scientific studies that have found a lot of cool things out about it.

giraffaTitan was a big brachiosaurid about 25 M in length. For the longest time it was thought to have been an African species of brachiosaurus and most depictions of Brachiosaurus throughout the years like Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs have been based on giraffatitan. It's now known to be a separate genus however.

Dicraeosaurus is a distant relative of diplodocus. It's notable for having a rather short neck.

Tornieria was estimated to have been around 25 M in length and was more closely related to diplodocus. It would have shared it's very long neck and whip like tail.

Carcharodontosaurians as a family first emerged in the late Jurassic around 150 million years ago. But by 150 million years ago they were already up to 10 m long massive predators.

Each box equals 20 cm

Each artist is credited in their images

Please bear in mind, the largest sizes for torvosaurus and Allosaurus are maximalist sizes based off very poor material.

These are size comparisons of the largest theropods from the lourinha formation.

Each artist is credited in the photo. Some size estimates are based off Scrappy materials such as footprints or incomplete maxillas. There's a range of sizes for such incomplete material. For the sake of brevity the larger sizes were chosen.