Carcharodontosaurus saharicus kar-KAR-oh-DON-toh-SOR-us

"Shark-toothed lizard"

Carcharodontosaurus silhouette — silhouette · Tasman Dixon (CC-BY) via PhyloPic

Length: 12 m (39 ft) — About 12 m long, ~7 tonnes — a giant carcharodontosaur from North Africa.
Period: Late Cretaceous (99–94 Mya)
Place: Africa · Morocco · Egypt
Food: Carnivore — Large prey — sauropods such as Paralititan that shared its habitat.
Clade: Allosauroidea Dinosauria Saurischia Theropoda Big Jurassic-Cretaceous predators: Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus.

A giant African predator whose serrated teeth recall a great white shark's bite.

Carcharodontosaurus took its name from the great white shark — its teeth were serrated like a shark’s, designed for slicing flesh rather than crushing bone. It hunted across the lush river deltas of North Africa, sharing turf with Spinosaurus, an even larger but fish-eating predator. Most of the original skeletons were destroyed in WWII bombings of Munich, so what we know now comes from teeth and later finds.

More about Carcharodontosaurus

Discovery

Named by Ernst Stromer (who established the genus in 1931), building on teeth first described in 1925 by Charles Depéret and Justin Savornin · 1931 · A partial skeleton was found in Egypt, while the first-described teeth came from Algeria.

French paleontologists Depéret and Savornin first described two teeth from Algeria in 1925 as Megalosaurus saharicus. Stromer later established the genus Carcharodontosaurus based on a partial skeleton his crews had found in Egypt in 1914, together with those earlier teeth.

The name means "shark-toothed lizard". It refers to the resemblance between its teeth and those of the great white shark (genus Carcharodon), which inspired the name.

Portrait of Ernst Stromer — Ernst Stromer A German paleontologist whose crews discovered the partial Egyptian skeleton, and who established the genus Carcharodontosaurus and its type species C. saharicus.

Are all the fossils called Carcharodontosaurus really the same animal?

The Egyptian skeleton Stromer used was later redescribed as a distinct genus, Tameryraptor, after it had already been destroyed. A second species named in 2007 from Niger's Farak Formation, C. iguidensis, might also belong to a different genus, so the boundaries of this genus are debated.

For the curious → How did such thin teeth survive feeding?

Carcharodontosaurid teeth were uniquely thin and blade-like, which likely made them prone to bending or snapping against bone. A high tooth replacement rate let damaged teeth be replaced easily, and a 2015 X-ray study found cracked enamel tufts that may have made the teeth more damage resistant.

What we know

Teeth shaped like serrated steak knives, ideal for slicing flesh from large prey.
Original skull material destroyed during WWII bombing of Munich; later finds replaced it.
Closely related to Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus.
Lived in the same ecosystem as Spinosaurus, the giant sail-backed fish-eater.

What we guess

Whether Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus competed directly or hunted different prey.
How its skull functioned — slicing bites are leading hypothesis but exact mechanics debated.
Whether the African and South American carcharodontosaurs are closer to each other than to other relatives.