# Carcharodontosaurus saharicus

> A giant predator from the mid-Cretaceous of North Africa with a skull about 1.6 m long and serrated, shark-like teeth. Its first skeleton was destroyed in Munich in 1944; a skull found in Morocco in 1995 replaced it.

- Classification: Dinosauria (clade) > Saurischia (clade) > Theropoda (clade) > Tetanurae (clade) > Allosauroidea (superfamily) > Carcharodontosauridae (family) > Carcharodontosaurus (genus) > Carcharodontosaurus saharicus (species)
- Length: 12–12.5 m
- Hip height: 2.8–3.3 m
- Mass: 5–7 t
- Age: 100.5–93.9 million years ago (Late Cretaceous)
- Fossils found in: Kem Kem Group (Morocco); Bahariya Formation (Egypt)
- Diet: carnivore
- Described: Charles Depéret & Justin Savornin, 1925

Canonical page: https://dinodex.club/dinosaurs/carcharodontosaurus-saharicus
Last updated: 2026-09-27

## Overview

Carcharodontosaurus saharicus lived in North Africa in the Cenomanian, about 100 to 94 million years ago, alongside Spinosaurus in a land of rivers and deltas. Charles Depéret and Justin Savornin named it Megalosaurus saharicus in 1925 from teeth found in Algeria; Ernst Stromer created the genus Carcharodontosaurus in 1931 from a partial skull and skeleton collected in 1914 by his assistant Richard Markgraf in Egypt.

Stromer's specimen was destroyed in 1944 during World War II; only a cast of its braincase survives. In 1995 Paul Sereno's team found a more complete skull in the Douira Formation of the Kem Kem region, Morocco, which became the reference specimen of the species.

Its skull was about 1.6 m long, among the longest of any meat-eating dinosaur, with blade-like teeth whose wrinkled enamel recalls a great white shark. Sereno and colleagues (1996) used it to show that carcharodontosaurids formed a widespread family of giant predators across the southern continents.

## Name meaning

"Shark-toothed lizard", from Greek karcharos ("jagged"), odous ("tooth") and sauros ("lizard"), after the great white shark Carcharodon (Stromer 1931); saharicus for the Sahara.

## Sources

1. (2026). Paleobiology Database: Carcharodontosaurus occurrences. The Paleobiology Database (paleobiodb.org), data service 1.2, accessed 2026-09-23. https://paleobiodb.org/data1.2/occs/list.txt?base_name=Carcharodontosaurus&show=coords,paleoloc,strat,loc,ref&pgm=gplates
2. (2026). Wikipedia: Carcharodontosaurus. Wikipedia (English), accessed 2026-09-23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcharodontosaurus
3. Brusatte, S. L. & Sereno, P. C. (2007). A new species of Carcharodontosaurus (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Cenomanian of Niger and a revision of the genus. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(4): 902-916. https://doi.org/10.1671/0272-4634(2007)27[902:ANSOCD]2.0.CO;2
4. Cohen, K. M., Harper, D. A. T., Gibbard, P. L. & Car, N. (2023). International Chronostratigraphic Chart (v2023/09). International Commission on Stratigraphy. https://stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/ChronostratChart2023-09.pdf
5. Ibrahim, N., Sereno, P. C., Varricchio, D. J., Martill, D. M., Dutheil, D. B., Unwin, D. M., Baidder, L., Larsson, H. C. E., Zouhri, S. & Kaoukaya, A. (2020). Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco. ZooKeys 928: 1-216. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.928.47517
6. Paul, G. S. (2016). The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2nd edition). Princeton University Press.
7. Sereno, P. C., Dutheil, D. B., Iarochene, M., Larsson, H. C. E., Lyon, G. H., Magwene, P. M., Sidor, C. A., Varricchio, D. J. & Wilson, J. A. (1996). Predatory dinosaurs from the Sahara and Late Cretaceous faunal differentiation. Science 272: 986-991. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.272.5264.986

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Cite as: "Carcharodontosaurus saharicus". DinoDex. https://dinodex.club/dinosaurs/carcharodontosaurus-saharicus (updated 2026-09-27).