Top 10 Deadliest Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era

As a general rule, you wouldn't want to cross paths with any of the dinosaurs that lived during the Mesozoic Era—but the fact remains that some species were much more dangerous than others. On the following slides, you'll discover nine tyrannosaurs, raptors, and other kinds of dinosaurs that could turn you into lunch (or a flattened, quivering pile of bones and internal organs) faster than you can say "Jurassic World."

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Giganotosaurus

During the Cretaceous period, the dinosaurs of South America tended to be bigger and fiercer than their counterparts elsewhere on the globe. The Giganotosaurus, an eight- to 10-ton, three-fingered predator whose remains have been found in close proximity to those of Argentinosaurus, is one of the biggest dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth. The inescapable conclusion: Giganotosaurus was one of the few theropods capable of taking down a full-grown titanosaur adult (or, at least, a more manageable juvenile).

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Utahraptor

A couple of fighting Utahraptors.

DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / Getty Images

Deinonychus and Velociraptor get all the press, but for sheer killing ability, no raptor was more dangerous than Utahraptor, adult specimens of which weighed almost a ton (compared to 200 pounds at most, for an exceptionally big Deinonychus). The Utahraptor's characteristic sickle-shaped toe claws were nine inches long and incredibly sharp. Weirdly, this giant raptor lived 50 million years before its more famous descendants, which were considerably smaller (but a lot faster).

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Tyrannosaurus Rex

We'll never know if Tyrannosaurus rex was particularly fiercer or scarier than other, less-popular tyrannosaurs like Albertosaurus or Alioramus—or even whether it hunted live prey or spent most of its time feasting on already-dead carcasses. Whatever the case, there's no question that T. rex was a fully functional killing machine when circumstances demanded, considering its five- to eight-ton bulk, sharp eyesight, and huge head studded with numerous, sharp teeth. (You have to admit, though, that its tiny arms lent it a slightly comical appearance.)

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Stegosaurus

You might not expect to encounter a small-headed, small-brained plant eater like Stegosaurus on a list of the world's deadliest dinosaurs—but focus your attention on the other side of this herbivore's body, and you'll see a dangerously spiked tail that could easily bash in the skull of a hungry Allosaurus (see Slide 8). This thagomizer (so named after a famous "Far Side" cartoon) helped to compensate for Stegosaurus' lack of intelligence and speed. One can easily imagine a cornered adult flopping down on the ground and swinging its tail wildly in all directions.

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Spinosaurus

In roughly the same weight class as Giganotosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, the northern African Spinosaurus was blessed with an additional evolutionary advantage: It's the world's first identified swimming dinosaur. This 10-ton predator spent its days in and around rivers, pinning fish between its massive, crocodile-like jaws and occasionally surfacing like a shark to terrorize smaller, land-bound dinosaurs. Spinosaurus may even have tangled occasionally with the comparably sized crocodile Sarcosuchus, aka the "SuperCroc," surely one of the epic matchups of the middle Cretaceous period.

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Majungasaurus

Majungasaurus, once known as Majungatholus, has been dubbed the cannibal dinosaur by the press, and even though this may be overstating the case, that doesn't mean this carnivore's reputation is entirely unearned. The discovery of ancient Majungasaurus bones bearing equally ancient Majungasaurus tooth marks is a good indication that these one-ton theropods preyed on others of their kind (hunting them down when they were very hungry and maybe even feasting on their remains if they found them dead). Although, it seems that this predator spent most of its time terrifying the smaller, quivering, plant-eating dinosaurs of late Cretaceous Africa.

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Ankylosaurus

The armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus was a close relative of Stegosaurus (Slide 4), and these dinosaurs repelled their enemies in a similar fashion. Whereas Stegosaurus had a spiked thagomizer on the end of its tail, Ankylosaurus was equipped with a massive, hundred-pound tail club, the late Cretaceous equivalent of a medieval mace. A well-aimed swing of this club could easily break the hind leg of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex, or even knock out a few of its teeth, though one imagines it may also have been employed in intraspecies combat during mating season.

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Allosaurus

It can be, well, deadly to speculate about how many individuals existed at any given time for any given dinosaur genus, based solely on the fossil evidence. But if we agree to make that imaginative leap, then Allosaurus was a far deadlier predator than the (much later) Tyrannosaurus rex—numerous specimens of this fierce, strong-jawed, three-ton meat-eater have been discovered across the western United States. As deadly as it was, though, Allosaurus wasn't very smart—for example, a group of adults perished in a single quarry in Utah, mired in deep muck as they salivated over already-trapped and struggling prey.

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Diplodocus

Surely, you must be thinking, Diplodocus doesn't belong on a list of the world's deadliest dinosaurs. Diplodocus, that gentle, long-necked, and invariably mispronounced plant-eater of the late Jurassic period? Well, the fact is that this 100-foot-long sauropod was equipped with a slender, 20-foot-long tail that (some paleontologists believe) it could crack like a whip, at hypersonic speeds, to keep predators like Allosaurus at bay. Of course, Diplodocus (not to mention the contemporaneous Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus) could simply squish its enemies flat with a well-placed stomp of its hind foot, but that's a much less cinematic scenario.

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Strauss, Bob. "Deadliest Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/deadliest-dinosaurs-1091958. Strauss, Bob. (2023, April 5). Deadliest Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/deadliest-dinosaurs-1091958 Strauss, Bob. "Deadliest Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/deadliest-dinosaurs-1091958 (accessed March 30, 2025).