Fossilized remains of Torvosaurus have been found in North America, Portugal, Germany, and possibly in England, Spain, Tanzania, and Uruguay.

The material consisted of part of the left foot and right hand and they were taken to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where they were stored until being re-discovered around 2010.

The authors noted that some of the specimens of “Megalosaurus” ingens figured by Werner Janensch share the features of the Uruguayan material and stated that the materials from Tanzania and Uruguay may represent the same taxon, due to geographical proximity, but ultimately concluded that, based on only teeth, they do not share any derived characteristics to distinguish them from the described species of the genus, T. tanneri and T.

[1] In 1971, Vivian Jones of Delta, Colorado, in the Calico Gulch Quarry in Moffat County, discovered a single gigantic thumb claw of a theropod.

In an effort to discover comparable fossils, Vivian's husband Daniel Eddie Jones directed Jensen to the Dry Mesa Quarry, where abundant gigantic theropod bones, together with Supersaurus remains, proved present in rocks of the Morrison Formation.

[10] The specific name tanneri comes from the, first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nathan Eldon Tanner.

[12] The original thumb claw, specimen BYUVP 2020, was only provisionally referred, as it had been found in a site 195 kilometers (121 mi) away from the Dry Mesa Quarry.

[12] In 1992, fossils of a large theropod found at Como Bluff in Wyoming contained skull, shoulder girdle, pelvic, and rib elements.

The specimen, nicknamed "Elvis", included the pelvic, spine, and hind limb bones, a complete, associated backbone, as well as cranial elements.

It is the largest named theropod known from Europe, although an isolated anterior caudal vertebra from the Vega Formation in Spain, which may belong to Torvosaurus or a closely related taxon, is about 15% larger than the one found on T.

[2] Claims have been made indicating even larger sizes for the American species T. tanneri, with estimates of up to 12 m (39 ft) in length and more than 4 t (4.4 short tons) based on incomplete remains of Edmarka rex and "Brontoraptor".

[2] However, later examination of a new right maxilla, probably belonging to the same individual as the holotype of T. gurneyi, has determined that, while the two species can be distinguished based on the morphology of the maxillary medial wall and interdental plates, the supposedly lower number of maxillary teeth in the Portuguese form may be an artifact of preservation, since it is not possible to know the exact number of teeth in the complete maxilla at the moment.

[11] Despite support for this concept by Paul Sereno[37] and Mateus,[22] it seems redundant because Torvosaurus is closely related to, and perhaps the sister species of, the earlier Megalosaurus within Megalosaurinae.

Torvosaurus's larger clade, Megalosauridae, is most commonly held as a basal branch of Tetanurae, considered to be less derived than carnosaurs or coelurosaurs and likely related to the spinosaurids.

[41][42][43] In 2013, Araújo et al. announced the discovery of specimen ML1188, a clutch of crushed dinosaur eggs and embryonic material attributed to Torvosaurus.

[24] This discovery further supports the hypothesis that large theropods were oviparous, meaning that they laid eggs and hence that embryonic development occurred outside the body of female dinosaurs.

This discovery was made in 2005 by the Dutch amateur fossil-hunter Aart Walen at the Lourinhã Formation in Western Portugal in fluvial overbank sediments that are considered to be from the Tithonian age of the Jurassic, approximately 152 to 145 million years ago.

[44] However, the eggshells are highly porous, allowing efficient gaseous exchange between the external and internal media, thus indicating the eggs were buried for incubation within substrate in a manner similar to modern seaturtles.

Immature individuals may also have occupied a different ecological niche from adults in habitats where their remains were likely to preserve as fossils and they may have been the prey of choice of larger predators as well.

[3] The type specimen of Torvosaurus tanneri, BYU 2002, was recovered in the Dry Mesa Quarry of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation in Montrose County, Colorado.

The specimen was collected by James A. Jensen and Kenneth Stadtman in 1972 in medium-grained, coarse sandstone that was deposited during the Tithonian and Kimmeridgian ages of the Jurassic, approximately 153 to 148 million years ago.

Studies suggest that the paleoenvironment of this section of the Morrison Formation included rivers that flowed from the west into a basin that contained a giant, saline alkaline lake and there were extensive wetlands in the vicinity.

The Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry of western Colorado yields one of the most diverse Upper Jurassic vertebrate assemblages in the world.

[46] The Dry Mesa Quarry has produced the remains of the sauropods Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, Supersaurus, and Camarasaurus, the iguanodonts Camptosaurus and Dryosaurus, and the theropods Allosaurus, Tanycolagreus, Koparion, Stokesosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Ornitholestes, as well as Othnielosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus, and Stegosaurus.

[47] The flora of the period has been revealed by fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, ferns, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers.

Other animal fossils discovered include bivalves, snails, ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, amphibians, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial (like Hoplosuchus) and aquatic crocodylomorphs, cotylosaurs, several species of pterosaurs, like Harpactognathus, and early mammals, such as multituberculates, symmetrodonts, and triconodonts.

[48] The small-scale trough and ripple cross-bedded fine-grained sandstone at the base of the Upper Dinosaur Member of the Tendaguru Formation, of which possible Torvosaurus material is known from, is interpreted as tidal flat deposits.

[53] Also, Rauhut et al. (2016) proposed that allosaurids and megalosaurids would have had different environmental preferences, the former being more common in inland areas, while the latter being dominant in marine and coastal environments.

The location of the bone in the body (along the bottom margin of the torso and partially shielded by the legs) and the fact that it was among the most massive in the skeleton indicates that the Allosaurus was being scavenged.

Unlike the others, these have left striations that, when measured to determine denticle width, produced tooth and body size extrapolations greater than any known specimen of Allosaurus or Ceratosaurus, the two large predators known for osteological remains from the quarry.