Carcharodontosaurus - Meaning: Carcharodon Lizard

Carcharodontosaurus (Kar-KAR-o-don-toe-sore-us) also meaning 'jagged-toothed lizard' was a gigantic carnivorous carcharodontosaurid dinosaur that lived around 98 to 93 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. It was nearly as long as Tyrannosaurus Rex, growing to an estimated 12 metres (40 feet) and weighing up to 4 tons.

Carcharodontosaurus was a carnivore, with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long. It may have hunted in packs, but no fossil evidence of this exists. It may have been a scavenger as well as an active predator.

Paleontologists once thought that Carcharodontosaurus had the longest skull of any of the theropod dinosaurs. However, the premaxilla and quadrate bones were missing from the original African skull, which led to misinterpretion of its actual size by researchers. A more modest length of 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) has now been proposed. Thus, the honour of the largest theropod skull now belongs to another huge carcharodontosaurid dinosaur, Carcharodontosaurus' close relative Giganotosaurus.

Carcharodontosaurus had long, muscular legs, and fossilized trackways indicate that it could run about 20 miles per hour, though there is some controversy as to whether it actually did. At four tons, a forward fall would have been deadly to Carcharodontosaurus, due to the inability of its small arms to brace the animal when it landed.