SCIENCE FILE: An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment. : Skeleton of Biggest Predatory Dinosaur Found in Argentina

A huge, meat-eating dinosaur that would have dwarfed even Tyrannosaurus rex has been found in Argentina. The monster, dubbed Giganotosaurus carolinii , was 41 to 43 feet long and weighed up to eight tons. It ran on two legs and had the fearsome jaws common to all large meat-eaters, a report in the journal Nature said. It lived about 97 million years ago, in the Upper Cretaceous period, 30 million years before T. rex.

“ G. carolinii is the largest theropod [two-legged dinosaur] ever recorded from the Southern Hemisphere and is probably the world’s biggest predatory dinosaur,” wrote the team from the Carmen Funes Museum in Neuquen, Argentina, and the Museum of Natural Sciences at the National University of Comahue. The skull alone was more than five feet long.