Being about 3 meters tall and weighing a ton, Megalosaurus, a “giant lizard,” lived up to its name. The Megalosaurus femur, discovered in England in 1676, was the first specimen of dinosaur fossil remains to fall into the hands of European scientists. At first, no one had any idea what it actually is. And only 150 years later, more than Richard Owen, one of the first anatomists, paleontologists, came to the conclusion that Megalosaurus belongs to the extinct reptiles – dinosaurs. Since then, the remains of megalosaurs have been found in different countries, but it was also possible to conclude from the fossilized fragments that megalosaurs belonged to the largest predators of the Jurassic, while their head was about a meter long. Fossil footprints from the south of England show that Megalosaurs had a clawed gait, and when they started running, they jerked their tails up. And they ran, quite fast, although they could not chase their prey for long periods.
Megalosaurus was a good ‘prototype’ of a giant two-legged predator: of all the theropods, only this body shape had survived to the end of the reptile era.

greatest length: 9m
Age: Jurassic
Fossils: Europe (England, France), Africa (Morocco).