Though hardly a household name like Velociraptor or Tyrannosaurus rex, Megalosaurus holds a key place in the history of paleontology. That’s not because it’s an exceptional dinosaur but as it was the first dinosaur discovered, even before the term dinosaur was ever coined.
For that reason, it is “phenomenally important,” according to Emma Nicholls, Collections Manager of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.
Megalosaurus is known to have roamed what is now the United Kingdom in the Mid Jurassic, between 168 million years to 165 million years ago. A meat-eating theropod, it stretched between about 20 and 30 feet in length. Based on early fossil discoveries it was once thought to be as long as 65 feet. But it’s actually on the lower end of the large theropods that roamed the later Cretaceous period. It was probably a “bipedal, agile hunter,” says Nicholls.
“Though the animal itself ...
