Carnotaurus

What it was like

Carnotaurus was a lightly built hunter with an unusual face. Two thick, blunt horns rose above its eyes, and its skull was short and deep, unlike the long snouts of most large meat-eating dinosaurs. At about 8 meters long, it combined a powerful bite with a body built for speed.

Its arms were tiny, barely more than stumps compared with its long, muscular legs, so its legs likely did most of the work in catching prey. Fossilized skin found with its skeleton shows rows of small, bumpy scales rather than feathers, some rising into larger bumps along its sides.

Its world

Carnotaurus lived in the Late Cretaceous, from about 72 to 66 million years ago, in what is now Argentina. Its only known skeleton was preserved in the La Colonia formation, alongside the remains of other animals from the same ancient landscape, including Koleken and Titanomachya.

As one of the larger predators of its region, Carnotaurus probably had few rivals for the animals it hunted. Its close relatives, such as Majungasaurus and Rajasaurus, lived on other parts of Gondwana, showing how widely this horned family of predators had spread.

How it was found

Carnotaurus was named by Bonaparte in 1985, based on a single, well-preserved skeleton, making it one of the most completely known predators found in South America. Scientists still debate exactly how its horns were used, with some suggesting head-to-head shoves between rivals and others suggesting the horns absorbed the force of a ramming blow.