Torvosaurus gurneyi - a dinosaur named after James Gurney, the artist and author of the dinosaur-themed book series Dinotopia - was the most monstrous dinosaur in prehistoric Europe. During the late Jurassic period, it was not less than a terror for prehistoric denizens of the Iberian Peninsula, including Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and parts of France.

It nearly grew up to 10m with weight between four to five tons. Previously, researchers believed that it belonged to the Northern American species Torvosaurus tanneri.

But after the dinosaur's bones were retrieved from the Lourinha Formation in west-central Portugal, differences were noticed by researchers between the number of teeth tail vertebrae, and mouth shapes of T. tanneri and T. gurneyi. The bones retrieved included the shin bone, upper jawbone, teeth, and partial tail vertebrae.

Researchers Christophe Hendrickx and Octavio Mateus reached the conclusion that they actually discovered a new species after comparing previous records. After recently discovering dinosaur embryos from Portugal, the scientists believe that it also belonged to T. gurneyi.

"With a skull of 115 cm, Torvosaurus gurneyi was however one of the largest terrestrial carnivores at this epoch, and an active predator that hunted other large dinosaurs, as evidenced by blade shape teeth up to 10 cm", said Hendrickx.

The scientists said that the big size of T. gurneyi was a result of presence of large herbivorous prey in abundance during that time. T. tanneri is not the biggest dinosaur ever discovered, as Tyrannosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Giganotosaurus from the Cretaceous were bigger, said the researcher.

They added that T. gurneyi might have walked the planet a full 80 million years before T. Rex did. Also, T. gurneyi was the biggest lizard in prehistoric Europe.