As big as T. rex
It was about the same length as Tyrannosaurus, perhaps a little longer, and lived 30 million years earlier.
The great hunters · Theropods
Giganotosaurus
Giant southern lizard · JIG-ah-NOT-oh-SORE-us
An enormous hunter with a long skull, rough ridges along its snout and three-fingered hands.
- Size
- About 12 to 13m long; 7 to 8 tonnes
- Lived
- About 99 to 95 million years ago
- Found in
- Patagonia, Argentina
Strides after you. Move your pointer and see.
To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the giganotosaurus
A skull as long as a person
Its skull was more than 1.5 metres long.
Teeth for slicing
Its teeth were thinner than a Tyrannosaurus's: made for cutting flesh, not crushing bone.
It hunted giants
It lived alongside some of the largest long-necks and may have hunted them.
Found by a car mechanic
An amateur fossil hunter, Rubén Carolini, discovered it in 1993.
Not a tyrannosaur
It belongs to a different family, more closely related to Allosaurus.
The real thing
Photos of the giganotosaurus
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Large plant-eating dinosaurs, including young long-necks.
How we know
The first skeleton is about 70 per cent complete.
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