The dinosaur’s fossilized remains were found in 1914 from the Bahariya Formation from a locality in the northern part of the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt. They were first described in 1931 by the German paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, who mistakenly dubbed the species the Carcharodontosaurus saharicus.

The fossil, destroyed in an air raid 80 years ago, had faded from memory until a paleontologist found archival images.

Paleontologists found the fossilized skull in Yunnan Province’s Lufeng Dinosaur National Geopark in China. The group determined the skull belonged to a sauropodomorph—a group of dinosaurs that also includes giant herbivorous sauropods such as Brachiosaurus —albeit one entirely new to the scientific record.

Less than a decade later, World War II swallowed Germany. The fossils were housed in the Old Academy building of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology when the campus was hit by air raids on July 21, 1944, completely destroying the wing containing fossils from Egypt, researchers said.

Scientists found a giant horned dinosaur from Egypt named Tameryraptor markgrafi after discovering lost photographs of fossils that were destroyed during World War II, The Sun reported. In 2023, researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany discovered previously unknown photographs of the lost fossils in the Huene Archive,

Archaeologists Baffled after Discovering Gigantic Skull of a 200-million-year-Old Dinosaur, Say it is a Never-Before-Seen Species In a groundbreaking discovery that has left archaeologists astounded,