Type Species: Magnosaurus nethercombensis
Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda - Carnosauria - Megalosauroidea - Megalosauria - Megalosauridae - Eustreptospondylinae
Time Period: Middle Jurassic
Location: Europe (England)
Diet: Carnivore
Magnosaurus used to be classified as an early species of Megalosaurus. Along with many other as-yet-unidentified theropods, it was part of the ‘Megalosaurus Wastebin,’ a drop-off for disarticulated theropod remains that look a lot like Megalosaurus but may be other creatures. In 2010 a Cambridge University paleontologist Roger Benson took a detailed look at the remains of a juvenile theropod and realized that, because the jawbone had a number of characteristics unseen in any other dinosaur (including Megalosaurus), they must belong to an entirely new genera. Thus Magnosaurus, its own kind of theropod, came into existence. Magnosaurus reached about thirteen feet in length and weighed between five hundred pounds and half a ton, and it hunted among the wooded islands of prehistoric England. It may be one of the first ‘stiff-tailed’ tetanuran theropods, making it a distant ancestor of the better-known Cretaceous theropods Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
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