Yangchuanosaurus

What it was like

Yangchuanosaurus was a large, powerfully built predator with a deep skull and blade-shaped, serrated teeth suited to tackling big prey. It walked on two legs, balanced by a long, heavy tail, and was probably the top predator in its ecosystem, hunting large plant-eating dinosaurs that shared its world. Yangchuanosaurus grew to about 10 meters (33 feet) long, making it one of the largest theropods known from Jurassic China. Like its close relative Sinraptor, it belonged to the family Metriacanthosauridae, a group of large Jurassic predators related to Allosaurus.

Its world

Yangchuanosaurus lived from about 171 to 113 million years ago, spanning the Middle Jurassic into the Early Cretaceous, in what is now China. Its fossils come from the Shaximiao and Suining formations. It shared its world with huge, long-necked sauropods such as Mamenchisaurus and Omeisaurus, plated stegosaurs including Tuojiangosaurus and Chungkingosaurus, and the closely related predator Sinraptor.

How it was found

Dong and colleagues named Yangchuanosaurus in 1978. Four fossil finds are known today, making it one of the better-known large predators from this part of the Jurassic world. It is closely related to Sinraptor, another large Chinese theropod from a similar time and place.