Torvosaurus is a megalosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of the United States of America, Portugal, and possibly the United Kingdom, Tanzania, and Uruguay. It was named in 1979 by Peter Galton and James Alvin Jensen. It was one of the biggest theropods to walk the earth during the Jurassic, only beaten by the Saurophaganax.
Physiology[]
Torvosaurus was a theropod with a slender body, a long tail, short arms with 3 fingers on each hand, and a long head with a mouth containing lots of big teeth. Its body would have been covered in scaly skin.
Diet[]
Torvosaurus was a predator, preying on ornithopods, mid-sized sauropods, stegosaurians, small crocodylomorphs, small pterosaurs, and smaller theropods. Its teeth had knife-like serrations from back to back, and were designed for crushing bone.
Ecology[]
Torvosaurus was a large theropod that ruled over its territory as a terrestrial apex predator. Some people may speculate that due to its large size, it was a scavenger that bullied smaller predators like Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus off their kills; at the same time, it was also capable on feeding on the many giant herbivores of the Jurassic plains, such as Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Diplodocus. Contrary to the flesh-shearing, muscle-powered bite of Allosaurus and the deep, lacerating bite of Ceratosaurus, Torvosaurus had a bite that was capable of cracking through the defenses of armored prey such as Stegosaurus. In general, this prodigious size and power can probably be attributed to the increasing size of the herbivores that lived during the Jurassic.
In popular culture[]
Torvosaurus was featured in the 2nd episode of the 2011 documentary Dinosaur Revolution, where it is shown as an imperious apex predator that uses size and aggression to intimidate other dinosaurs into running away. Only one dinosaur, an Allosaurus with a broken jaw, dares to fight against the giant theropod; eventually, with some help from a gigantic diplodocid, he succeeds.