Long before leo wore the crown, a mighty reptilian meat-eater that would have dwarfed the largest lion was King of the Jungle.
Several three-toed footprints left by the two-legged "megatheropod" - an early forerunner of Tyrannosaurus rex - were found near the site of a prehistoric watering hole or river bank in the kingdom of Lesotho.
Experts calculated that the fearsome creature would have been around nine metres long and stood almost three metres tall at the hip.
It was four times the size of a lion, the largest carnivore in southern Africa today.
The dinosaur, named Kayentapus ambrokholohali, was much larger than any other meat-eating dinosaur previously discovered in Africa.
British team member Dr Fabien Knoll, from the University of Manchester, said: "The latest discovery is very exciting and sheds new light on the kind of carnivore that roamed what is now southern Africa.
"That's because it is the first evidence of an extremely large meat-eating animal roaming a landscape otherwise dominated by a variety of herbivorous, omnivorous and much smaller carnivorous dinosaurs. It really would have been top of the food chain."
Each of the footprints, preserved in rock over many millions of years, measured 57cm long and 50cm wide.
The footprints were found in the Maseru district of Lesotho by an international team of experts who described the find in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
Co-author Dr Lara Sciscio, from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said: "This discovery marks the first occurrence of very large carnivorous dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic of southern Gondwana, the prehistoric continent which would later break up and become Africa and other landmasses.
"This makes it a significant find. Globally, these large tracks are very rare. There is only one other known site similar in age and sized tracks, which is in Poland."
