Ulughbegsaurus

Say it: oo-LOOG-beg-SORE-us

Name means: “Ulugh Beg's lizard”1

Ate: MeatMeat-eating dinosLate Cretaceous

Ulughbegsaurus was a huge meat-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Uzbekistan. It was one of the top predators of its time, even bigger than the early tyrannosaurs that lived nearby.2

Lived

94 to 90 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Bissekty Formation, Kyzylkum Desert, Navoi Viloyat, Uzbekistan2

Food

Meat3

Length

7.5 to 8 m2

estimate based on maxilla comparison

Weight

1 tonnes2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 33 big dogs

as long as 8 dogs nose to tailas long as 44 bananas end to endas heavy as 200 watermelons

How big was Ulughbegsaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Ulughbegsaurus was a carcharodontosaurian, a group of large predatory dinosaurs that were the top hunters before tyrannosaurs took over.2

It lived about 90 to 92 million years ago during the Turonian stage of the Late Cretaceous.2

The only known fossil is a left maxilla (upper jaw bone) that is 24.2 cm long and 13.1 cm tall.2

Ulughbegsaurus shared its home with smaller predators like the tyrannosauroid Timurlengia and the dromaeosaurid Itemirus.1

Its name honors Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer and mathematician from Central Asia.2

Scientists think Ulughbegsaurus was the apex predator of the Bissekty ecosystem, while tyrannosauroids were smaller mesopredators.2

AI-made picture of Ulughbegsaurus — An AI-made picture of how Ulughbegsaurus might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Ulughbegsaurus
Named by: Tanaka et al. 20214
Group: Meat-eating dinos
Family / clade: Carcharodontosauria4
Classification: Theropoda > Allosauroidea4
Age of the rocks: 94 to 90 million years (Turonian)4
Rock formations: Bissekty4
Countries: Uzbekistan4
Fossil records: 3 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The holotype maxilla was collected in the 1980s by a field team member of Lev Nessov in the Kyzylkum Desert, Uzbekistan. It was rediscovered in 2019 and named by Tanaka and colleagues in 2021.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Ulughbegsaurus was because only a few jaw bones have been found. The length estimate of 7.5 to 8 metres is based on comparisons with other allosauroids.2

Where the facts come from

Ulughbegsaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
A new carcharodontosaurian theropod dinosaur occupies apex predator niche in the early Late Cretaceous of Uzbekistan (royalsocietypublishing.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Ulughbegsaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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