Meet the giant dinosaur that roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago

Globally at around 200 million years ago, in what’s known as the Early Jurassic, small and agile two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods roamed the ancient landscapes. In southern Africa, we know of their existence from their rare body fossils but also, importantly, from their fossil footprints.

Now our team’s new discovery, published in PLOS ONE, unexpectedly reveals that very large carnivorous dinosaurs with an estimated body length of between 8 to 9 meters (or 26 feet) – that’s a two-story building or two adult rhinos nose to tail – lived in southern Africa too.

Evidence for this massive beast comes from a set of three-toed, 57cm long and 50cm wide footprints recently found in western Lesotho. This is a first for Africa. It places a huge carnivorous dinosaur in what was then the southern part of the supercontinent Gondwana during Early Jurassic times.
Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic.

There has only been one other report of large carnivorous dinosaurs occurring as early as 200 million years ago. This also came from fossil footprint evidence in Poland’s Holy Cross Mountains. Such giants are rare. The iconic and enormous (about 12 metres long) Tyrannosaurus, for instance, only emerged around 128 million years later during the Late Cretaceous.

The dimensions of the trackmaker with the 57cm long feet, although slightly smaller, come close to those of the well-known and younger Late Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex or the similarly huge North African Spinosaurus.
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