Welcome to the Camp Cretaceous Archives
At this time you will learn more about what happened on Isla Nublar and much more, this time you will learn about all the creatures that our campers managed to discover during their survival on Isla Nublar
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Period: Upper Cretaceous (approximately between 72 to 69.9 million years).
Length: between 8 to 9 meters.
Height: Between 3 to 3.5 meters.
Weight: Between 1.3 to 2.1 tons.
Diet: Carnivore.
Carnotaurus sastrei, is the only known species of the extinct genus Carnotaurus of theropod dinosaur of the Abelisauridae family, from the Cretaceous period, approximately 72 to 69.9 million years ago, from the Campaniense to the Maastrichtiense, in what is now South America.
Carnotaurus was a lightly built, but stocky-bodied bipedal dinosaur that shared the characteristics of a typical abelisaurid. Along its back, from head to tail, its skin was covered in bony plates.
The most notable thing about this dinosaur is its two small horns above the eyes on its small head, being the first carnivore to show well-formed and well-defined horns. Its name comes from the Latin carō, carnis, "meat", and taurus, "bull", and was given to it for being a bull-like carnivore, due to the horn-like appendages on its head. These were not used to attack, perhaps he used them to expose himself.
Carnotaurus is one of the shortest-armed dinosaurs, inferior even to Tyrannosaurus. The hands had three little fingers and a spur-like fourth finger where these were of little use to him as they were too small. The arms had a short, stocky arm that would in practice form part of the hand, since the wrist joint prevented it from making large movements.
The hind legs, on the other hand, were very long and strong, which suggests that it was a fast animal. What scientists are most sure of, due to the type of legs it had, is that Carnotaurus ran very well and it is believed that it was one of the fastest theropods that, interestingly, could reach speeds of up to 53 km/h, that is also thanks to its agile and light but strong body.
The feeding habits of Carnotaurus are still not entirely clear to researchers, although some studies of cranial morphology suggest that the animal was capable of hunting very large prey, such as sauropods. Other studies found that it fed mainly on relatively small animals.
It is not a mystery that this dinosaur is one of the most recognized in popular culture, even being an iconic dinosaur like the Tyrannosaurus.
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