In the film “Jurassic World” released in 2015, the theme park’s latest attraction was a synthetic dinosaur called Indominus rex. It was a hybrid of several dinosaurs, a cross between a Velociraptor, a T. rex and other fearsome predators. Scientists recently announced the discovery of a super-sized megaraptor that roamed Argentina around 70 million years ago. At perhaps as much as 10 metres long, Maip macrothorax is the largest megaraptorid known to science and with its long, powerful arms it had a similar body plan to the fictional Indominus.

Maip macrothorax

Everything Dinosaur recently wrote about this remarkable dinosaur in a blog post.

To read Everything Dinosaur’s recent blog post about the discovery of M. macrothorax: A New, Giant Megaraptorid Dinosaur is Described from Argentina.

In the science fiction movie “Jurassic World” geneticists engineered a super-sized predator taking traits from various carnivorous dinosaurs and extant animals. The fictional dinosaur was named Indominus rex. Ironically, palaeontologists have unearthed the fossilised remains of a real dinosaur (Maip macrothorax) that had a similar body plan.

So perhaps, it is true after all, that life sometimes imitates art. Although, since Maip macrothorax lived some 70 million years or so before the “Jurassic Park/Jurassic World” franchise came into being, perhaps it is more accurate to say that art imitates life…

For dinosaur models including replicas of theropod dinosaurs: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.