A New, Giant Predatory Dinosaur From Spain

Scientists in Spain announced this week the discovery of a large tooth from a predatory dinosaur similar to Allosaurus. Found by local residents in Riodeva, Teruel, the nearly 4-inch-long tooth is the largest predatory dinosaur tooth yet found from the country. Just what dinosaur the tooth belonged to is as yet unknown. The scientists who described it for the journal Estudios Geologicos, as LiveScience reports, are pretty confident that it came from an allosaurid, and may be closely related to the as-yet-unknown dinosaur that left similar teeth in the strata of Portugal. Whatever the dinosaur was, though, it appears to have dined on sauropods. A bone from the sauropod Turiasaurus riodevensis found in the same area as the new tooth bears a large puncture mark that appears to have been made by a large predatory dinosaur. No doubt more exciting discoveries will emerge from Riodeva.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.