Eustreptospondylus was a large meat-eating dinosaur that
lived during the Jurassic era about 165-160 million years ago. Its fossils have
been found in an area that comprises the present-day counties of Oxfordshire
and Buckinghamshire in England.
The first fairly complete specimen was found in 1870 and it
was mistakenly categorised as “Megalosaurus”, which was the only genus of
meat-eating dinosaurs known at the time to have existed in that region. It was
not until 1964 that Eustreptospondylus was identified as a separate species and
given its own name.
The name means “well-curved backbone”, which refers to the
arrangement of the bones of the spine.
Eustreptospondylus measured about six metres from nose to
tip of tail and probably weighed about 400 kilograms (900 pounds). It was
equipped with a mouthful of very sharp teeth and would have been a fearsome
hunter. It probably preyed on sauropod plant-eating dinosaurs such as Cetiosaurus.
© John Welford
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