A TEAM of leading fossil hunters is to publish details of the largest carnivorous dinosaur known to have stalked the Earth.

The remains of the creature, mapusaurus roseae, have been unearthed in a quarry in Patagonia in Argentina with measurements suggesting it was more than 45ft long and weighed over eight tons.

For scientists, however, perhaps the most interesting feature of the find is that the bones of numerous individual mapusaurus were found in the same place — powerful evidence they were living and hunting as a pack.

The creature would have resembled the tyrannosaurus rex, walking on its two hind legs and equipped with large powerful jaws.

“People have become increasingly aware of a group of gigantic meat-eating dinosaurs called carcharodontosaurids,” said Philip Currie of the Alberta University, Canada, who co-led the team and whose findings will be published this week.

“These include giganotosaurus, which was larger than the largest known specimen of tyrannosaurus rex. After four years of working in a dinosaur quarry in Argentina, we have found another new species from the same group.”

Scientists are cautious of claims about the size of dinosaurs, partly because they are inferring real-life dimensions from fossils up to 100m years old and partly because the specimens uncovered are always a tiny fraction of the animals’ former populations. However, measurements of the shins and other bones of mapusaurus show they are longer than any yet found from their “cousins” the tyrannosauruses.

Until recently, palaeontologists believed the size and aggression of such creatures would have obliged them to pursue largely solitary lifestyles.

However, Professor Rodolfo Coria of the Carmen Funes museum in Plaza Huincul, Argentina, who worked with Currie, believes that hunting as a pack would have given mapusaurus a big advantage in tackling the huge herbivores on which they probably preyed.

The biggest may have inclu- ded argentinosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever found, which could reach 70ft high, equivalent to a six-storey building.

With an estimated weight of 100 tons and a powerful tail with which to defend itself, such a creature would have been far too large for a solitary mapusaurus to tackle. However, a combination of hunting in packs and their huge individual size, could have enabled them to fell even a beast such as argentinosaurus.

“The presence of so many animals in one quarry suggests they were living together in a pack at the time leading up to their catastrophic death,” said Currie.

The excavation of the quarry was partly sponsored by Don Lessem, a dinosaur expert who set up two charities, the Dinosaur Society and more recently, the Jurassic Foundation, to fund such work.

He was also an adviser to the film Jurassic Park, which depicted predatory dinosaurs hunting as a pack — a portrayal that was criticised as unrealistic by some palaeontologists at the time but which now seems far-sighted. “This is one of the most remarkable of a dozen new species discoveries, many of them gigantic, in the past decade from this region of western Patagonia,” Lessem said.

The discoveries, made 15 miles south of the city of Plaza Huincul, have taken five years of excavation under the direction of Coria and Currie who removed many tons of sandstone from a desert hilltop.

During the late cretaceous period (99-65m years ago), the global climate was at least 2-3C warmer than now, meaning no ice existed at the poles. One theory is that the extra warmth meant vegetation grew faster than now — so there was more food for herbivores and predators too. This could be part of the explanation for the huge sizes reached by such dinosaurs.

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