Dino of the Week: Wiehenvenator

Type Species: Wiehenvenator albati

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Carnosauria - Megalosauroidea - Megalosauria - Megalosauridae - Megalosaurinae

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: Europe (Germany)

Diet: Carnivore 

Wiehenvenator was a two-ton, thirty-foot-long megalosaurid from Germany. It was larger than its English cousin Megalosaurus and was one of the largest Middle Jurassic theropods (and one of the largest European theropods in general). It’s known from a single specimen that was nine to ten years old when it met a watery grave in the warm, shallow North Sea. Its remains were discovered in the Ornatenton Formation, a marine deposit which stretches from the Eastern Alps to the Rhine Valley. Numerous marine fossils have been uncovered in the formation, including bones belonging to the pliosaur Liopleurodon and the oceangoing crocodylomorph Metriorhynchus. At this point in the Jurassic, Germany was riddled with bays and inlets from the shallow and sub-tropical North Sea; western France and Germany were a series of archipelagos bordering the flurry of wooded islands of England. Wiehenvenator was the apex predator among these German archipelagos; its teeth were recurved with the root making up more than two-thirds of the tooth length. The largest teeth measured slightly more than five inches in length. Research Dr. Rauhut notes, ‘Apparently there was in these islands [of Germany] a wide range of sometimes very large predators mainly from the group of Megalosauroidea as finds from France and England, as well as the new predators from Germany show. The Megalosauroidea were the first giant predatory dinosaurs of Earth’s history’ – and Wiehenvenator was the tyrant of them all. Sadly, Wiehenvenator’s legacy wouldn’t last, as the Late Jurassic saw the demise of the megalosaurids and the rise of the coelurosaurs and allosaurs.