In the annals of dinosauriana, size and apparent ferocity count a great deal towards fame. By that measure, Torvosaurus should be a household name. Described by paleontologists Peter Galton and James Jensen in 1979 from bones found in Colorado’s Dry Mesa Quarry, this long-skulled, fiendishly-clawed theropod was a bulky predator that reached over 30 feet in length and weighed more than four tons. Even among the Jurassic floodplains of prehistoric North America where the impressive Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus also roamed, Torvosaurus stood out as an especially large carnivore.

And Torvosaurus has turned up in Portugal, too. In 2000 paleontologists Octávio Mateus and Miguel Antunes wrote a brief paper on a tibia –