Carcharodontosaurus

📖 1. Overview

It was a giant North African theropod that hunted massive sauropods using flat, serrated teeth resembling those of a great white shark.

🌐 Wikipedia Summary Extract

Carcharodontosaurus is a genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived in Northwest Africa from about 100 to 94 million years ago during the Cenomanian age of the late Cretaceous period. The genus was first described in 1925 by French paleontologists Charles Depéret and Justin Savornin as Megalosaurus saharicus, based on two fossil teeth discovered in Algeria, which are now lost. A partial skeleton was discovered in Egypt as early as 1914 by crews of German paleontologist Ernst Stromer, although he did not report the find until 1931. Based on this specimen as well as the teeth previously described by Depéret and Savornin, Stromer established the genus Carcharodontosaurus, with C. saharicus as the only species. Although the Egyptian skeleton was destroyed during World War II, it was redescribed as a closely related but distinct genus, Tameryraptor, based on historical photographs in 2025. In 1995, a large incomplete skull attributed to C. saharicus was discovered in the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco, which was officially proposed as the neotype in 2007. In the same year, fossils unearthed from the Farak Formation of Niger were described and named as another species, C. iguidensis, though this taxon might belong to a different genus.

🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology

With a skull reaching 1.6 m in length, it sliced flesh from large prey using its razor-like teeth.

🔍 3. Fossil Record & Paleoecology

In North Africa during the same period, it shared apex ecological niches by dividing prey with Spinosaurus, which hunted aquatic fish.

🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea

It is a reference species for studying the evolution of mid-Cretaceous Asian and African theropods.