Eustreptospondylus

Type Species: Eustreptospondylus oxoniensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Carnosauria - Megalosauroidea – - Megalosauria - Megalosauridae - Eustreptospondylinae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: Europe (England) 

Diet: Carnivore   

The twenty-foot-long theropod Eustreptospondylus was discovered in the shallow marine sediments of the Oxford Sea. This predator prowled the prehistoric beaches of English islands during the Late Jurassic. It had a pointed snout with large nostrils. It was smaller than its contemporary Metriacanthosaurus, and it probably fed on small dinosaurs and pterosaurs or scavenged carcasses washed up on island beaches. Many scientists believe it was a strong swimmer capable of swimming island-to-island like the modern Komodo Dragon. A similar and contemporaneous theropod, Streptosponydlus, hunted the archipelagos of modern France. 

Magnosaurus

Type Species: Magnosaurus nethercombensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda - Carnosauria - Megalosauroidea -  Megalosauria - Megalosauridae - Eustreptospondylinae

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: Europe (England)

Diet: Carnivore

Magnosaurus used to be classified as an early species of Megalosaurus. Along with many other as-yet-unidentified theropods, it was part of the ‘Megalosaurus Wastebin,’ a drop-off for disarticulated theropod remains that look a lot like Megalosaurus but may be other creatures. In 2010 a Cambridge University paleontologist Roger Benson took a detailed look at the remains of a juvenile theropod and realized that, because the jawbone had a number of characteristics unseen in any other dinosaur (including Megalosaurus), they must belong to an entirely new genera. Thus Magnosaurus, its own kind of theropod, came into existence. Magnosaurus reached about thirteen feet in length and weighed between five hundred pounds and half a ton, and it hunted among the wooded islands of prehistoric England. It may be one of the first ‘stiff-tailed’ tetanuran theropods, making it a distant ancestor of the better-known Cretaceous theropods Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.