Carcharodontosaurus

Summary

Carcharodontosaurus is an extinct genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived in Northwest Africa from about 100 to 94 million years ago during the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous. The taxon 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, together with the teeth previously described by Depéret and Savornin, Stromer established the genus Carcharodontosaurus and its type species C. saharicus. Although the Egyptian skeleton was destroyed during World War II, it was subsequently redescribed as the holotype (name-bearing) specimen of a distinct carcharodontosaurid genus, Tameryraptor. 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.