Saurophaganax

Saurophaganax maximus was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic period. A theropod built on the same body plan as Allosaurus, it was significantly bigger — among the largest predatory dinosaurs alive 150 million years ago. Oklahoma designated it the state fossil in 2000.

Its fossils come from the Morrison Formation, a rock layer that stretches across the American West and preserves the most complete picture of Jurassic life on the continent. In Oklahoma, that formation is exposed in the Black Mesa area of the far western Panhandle.

Saurophaganax maximus reached up to 40 feet (12 meters) in length, making it one of the largest theropods known from the Jurassic period and noticeably larger than most Allosaurus specimens of the same era. Its skull was deep and narrow, lined with blade-like serrated teeth designed to tear through flesh.

It was an apex predator that hunted the giant sauropod dinosaurs sharing its habitat — animals like Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus. Strong forelimbs ended in three hooked claws. Its hind legs were built for bursts of speed over short distances.

The name Saurophaganax means 'lord of the lizard eaters' in Greek. It went extinct at the end of the Jurassic period, about 145 million years ago, along with most of the other large animals of the Morrison Formation ecosystem.

University of Oklahoma paleontologist J. Willis Stovall first described bones from the Black Mesa area in 1941, naming the animal Saurophagus maximus. The specimens were large enough to suggest a predator bigger than any Allosaurus then on record, but they remained in the university's collections without drawing wide attention for decades.

In 1995, paleontologist Daniel Chure completed a detailed study of the fossils and formally reclassified the animal as a distinct genus: Saurophaganax. The reclassification gave Oklahoma a dinosaur found nowhere else with quite the same combination of size and features.

Oklahoma named Saurophaganax maximus its official state fossil in 2000. The designation honored the University of Oklahoma's long role in collecting and studying the species and recognized the Black Mesa area as one of the state's most significant paleontological sites.

All known Saurophaganax material comes from the Morrison Formation in Cimarron County, Oklahoma's westernmost county in the Panhandle. The Black Mesa area — where Oklahoma reaches its highest elevation at 4,973 feet — exposes Late Jurassic rock that has yielded bones of this predator alongside the large sauropods it hunted.

The original specimens collected by Stovall are held at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman. The museum displays a mounted skeleton of Saurophaganax maximus, one of the only physical reconstructions of this species anywhere in the world.