Outline: a typical theropod
Sarcosaurus
"flesh lizard"
Type species Sarcosaurus woodi
- Lived
- 201 to 193 million years ago, Early Jurassic
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Length
- about 3 m (10 ft)
- Group
- Theropods
- Found in
- United Kingdom
- Named by
- Andrews 1921
Size comparison
To scale
Scale in metersOutline: typical theropod shape
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
195 million years ago
Field notes
About Sarcosaurus
What it was like
Sarcosaurus was a meat eater about 3 meters (10 feet) long, one of the earliest Jurassic theropods known. It was a lightly built, two-legged hunter related to Coelophysis.
Its world
It lived about 201 to 193 million years ago, in the Early Jurassic, in what is now England. Its bones come from the Blue Lias, rocks laid down in a shallow sea, so its body probably washed in from land nearby.
How it was found
Andrews named Sarcosaurus in 1921. Only two finds are known, and it is one of very few theropods from the start of the Jurassic, when dinosaurs were spreading after the extinctions at the end of the Triassic.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Coelophysoidea
Sources: WikidataNamed in: C. W. Andrews. 1921. On some remains of a theropodous dinosaur from the Lower Lias of Barrow-on-Soar. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, series 9 8:570-576