Megatheropods: Nature's Biggest Terrestrial Carnivores

Theropod dinosaurs are the most charismatic terrestrial predators in Earth’s history, with complex ecologies, physiologies, and evolutionary relationships. From movies to books to video games, theropods have left a cultural footprint unlike any other group of extinct vertebrates. And even these terrifying and majestic animals have an elite group within them: the megatheropods.
If all theropods formed the ranks of a military, then these are the officers, the generals, the supreme commanders. There are a few definitions floating around the internet about what exactly a megatheropod is, so here’s a modified version of mine from 2017. A megatheropod is any theropod dinosaur that consistently attains an average adult mass of 5000 kilograms or higher. This definition is more exclusionary than my old video, and that’s because while researching this I put an emphasis on consistency and utilizing multiple mass estimates per species from different sources, which I’ve linked here.

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00:00: What Is A Megatheropod?
00:58: The Tier List
01:31: The Cimmerian Giant
01:53: Saurophaganax
02:27: Edmarka rex
02:51: NHMG 8500
03:23: Oxalaia quilombensis
03:42: Acrocanthosaurus atokensis
04:12: Deinocheirus mirificus
04:48: Therizinosaurus cheloniformis
05:12: Megalosaurus/Torvosaurus ingens
05:37: Carcharodontosaurus saharicus
06:07: The South African Titan
06:33: Tyrannotitan
07:08: Mapusaurus roseae
07:32: Spinosaurinae indet.
07:52: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus
08:27: The Destroyer Tier
08:37: Giganotosaurus carolinii
09:28: Tyrannosaurus rex

Megatheropod Data 2023: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1okCeHS0CvNmnKjkeJn28LOvZJAYzRUJadv_LumuzAwM/edit?usp=sharing

Megatheropod Sources 2023:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11k6OKunxG_PmgFLcCKNO3bBeWv0DTbpwij9FzpxPfwc/edit#slide=id.p

Tyrannotitan Image Source: Brett Booth
Acrocanthosaurus Image Source: Apsaravis

Acrocanthosaurus Hook Claw Study: Senter, Phil; Robins, James H. (2005). "Range of motion in the forelimb of the theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, and implications for predatory behaviour". Journal of Zoology. 266 (3): 307–318. doi:10.1017/S0952836905006989.

Average Bull African Bush Elephant Mass Source: https://academic.oup.com/mspecies/article/doi/10.2307/3503889/2600894?login=true

Black Vortex - Scoring Action by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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