Teratosaurus

Teratosaurus was a large, ancient creature that lived a very long time ago during the late Triassic period in what is now Germany. It belonged to a group of animals called rauisuchians, which were not dinosaurs but were related to them. Scientists have found fossils of Teratosaurus in places like the Stubensandstein, Löwenstein Formation.

Experts think Teratosaurus could grow up to about 6.2 meters, or roughly 20 feet, long. This means it was quite big and likely a powerful predator in its environment. Studying fossils like those of Teratosaurus helps us learn more about the Earth’s history and the many different kinds of animals that once lived on our planet.

Discovery

In 1860, a scientist named Sixt Friedrich Jakob von Kapff found a big bone from the upper jaw of a large reptile near Stuttgart. Another scientist, Hermann von Meyer, studied the bone and decided it was different from another reptile called Belodon. He named it Teratosaurus suevicus. The name "Teratosaurus" comes from Greek words meaning "monster lizard." The bone he found is kept in a museum and is called the holotype.

For many years, scientists thought Teratosaurus was a type of early meat-eating dinosaur. They even thought it might have been an ancestor to bigger meat-eating dinosaurs that lived later. But in the 1980s, two scientists named Peter Galton and Michael Benton discovered that Teratosaurus was actually a type of large reptile called a rauisuchian. These reptiles were not dinosaurs, but they lived at the same time as dinosaurs during the Late Triassic period.