Outline: a typical theropod
Shaochilong
"shark-toothed dragon"
- Lived
- 121 to 101 million years ago, Early Cretaceous
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Group
- Theropods, Carcharodontosauridae
- Found in
- China
- Named by
- Brusatte et al. 2009
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
110 million years ago
Field notes
About Shaochilong
What it was like
Shaochilong was a medium-sized meat eater known from pieces of the skull and a few backbones. It is usually placed in the same family as Carcharodontosaurus, big hunters with blade-like teeth, but some studies place it elsewhere among the large theropods.
It was much smaller than the giants of its family.
Its world
It lived in the Cretaceous in what is now northern China. Its bones come from the Miaogou Formation, where it lived alongside the armored Gobisaurus and the plant eater Probactrosaurus.
How it was found
Brusatte and colleagues named Shaochilong in 2009 for bones that had first been placed in a different genus. It showed that relatives of Carcharodontosaurus reached Asia.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Carcharodontosauridae
Sources: WikidataNamed in: S. L. Brusatte, R. B. J. Benson, and D. J. Chure, X. Xu, C. Sullivan, D. W. E. Hone. 2009. The first definitive carcharodontosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Asia and the delayed ascent of tyrannosaurids. Naturwissenschaften 96:1051-1058