Born from Boredom: Part 9, Giant Theropods

A drawing of five giant theropods from the Jurassic, the largest in North America, Europe, and Africa, from what my school mind could recall. At the top is Ceratosaurus sp (ignore the C. dentisculatus, that's Portuguese), representing Africa, around 30-33ft long, excluding contemporary Allosaurus? tendagurensis, which is at the moment, not well-known enough from fossils to properly identify and even then, I wanted to feature a more obscure species than the famed allosaur. Ceratosaurus sp. was estimated at over seven meters and has an unknown horn shape, presuming it had one. Some people say 33ft, so I went with that.

North America has a three-way tie between giant theropods known (surprise!) from the Morrison. At the top we have the giant megalosaur Edmarka rex, 35+ ft long, from the lower and middle Morrison Formation. E. rex is personally one of my favorite theropods of all time, due to its size. Next we have transcontinental (found in America and Portugal) Torvosaurus tanneri, portrayed here as 33+ ft long, based on estimates I have heard. Along with E. rex, T. tanneri would have occupied the top predator niche of the lower and middle Morrison; with its sheer size, one can only assume it could hunt sauropods if it wanted to. T. tanneri, with an estimated skulls of 5.18ft, it could have probably grown to even more impressive sizes. Lastly, is the New Mexican and Oklahoman Saurophaganax maximus, sometimes identified as a species of Allosaurus. I wrote it down as 39ft maximum, but it could probably obtain lengths of 43ft; meh, four feet isn't a lot of difference with a brute like this. The most recent review on basal tetanurans suggests this is indeed a different genus from Allosaurus.

Finally, at the bottom, we have the unnamed "Das Monster von Minden", brought to international notice in 1999. When you have a name as epic as that, you gotta look cool too, so the Allosaurus-like "Monster" is portrayed with keratinous spikes, horns, ridges, throat pouches, scars, etc. The skull is estimated to have been 3ft long, and estimates for length range from 23-49ft; I have tentatively placed it at 39ft long.

Not to scale. Yangchuanosaurus shangyuensis, the largest known Jurassic China theropod, Ozraptor subotaii (at 10ft long, surprisingly the biggest known Jurassic Australia theropod), and Piatnitzkysaurus floresi (no joke I had to look this up just to know how to spell it) were considered as well, but ended up looking weird as all the five theropods looked so perfectly aligned already. Oh well, maybe another day.