Carnotaurus

Carnotaurus, also known as Carnotaurs ("meat-eating bull"), were a species of abelisaurid carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous period 72–69.9 million years ago in South America. They appear as the overarching antagonists of Disney's 2000 animated feature film Dinosaur.
==Background==
===Personality===
Although they serve as the film's overarching antagonists, Carnotaurs are simply natural carnivores who require meat to survive, and have no real malicious intent. Like most predators, they see prey creatures as little more than food. Though they have no dialogue in the film, they are not without a certain level of intelligence, as they were smart enough to follow the herd's tracks to find food and water. 
The two in the movie might be a mated pair or perhaps siblings, as they have a very strong bond, and the surviving one shows a powerful grudge against Aladar by trying to drag him over a cliff, possibly to avenge the death of its companion, even at the cost of its own life.
Carnotaurs are powerful predators, feared by most other dinosaurs. Eema describes them as a "mouthful of teeth with a bad attitude". However, it should be noted that, like most predators, they prefer weak and/or solitary prey to animals that could put up a fight. Their favorite quarry would have been stragglers or much smaller creatures, as even these mighty predators could not contend with an entire herd. 
===Physical appearance===
Standing around 15 feet tall and measuring a seeming 40+ feet in length, the Carnotaurs are fearsome, bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs with reddish scales, long tails, sharp teeth, and short horns. Their stubby arms are vestigial, as the bipedal predators no longer require them for locomotion. The two Carnotaurs that serve as the film's main antagonists are noticeably different in size, though it is unknown whether they are a mated pair or just relatives. Both Carnotaurs are ambiguous in regards to their genders, and it is never stated whether either is male or female.
==Appearances==
===Dinosaur===
A Carnotaurus first appears at the beginning of the film where a young Parasaurolophus accidentally chases a into the jungle. The flying lizard eventually lands on what appears to be the bark of a large tree. The young dinosaur looks up to where the reptile is, but before it can get close, saliva falls on the branch next to it, causing the young dinosaur to look up where the lizard landed: the nose and mouth of a Carnotaur, which quickly awakens, dropping saliva. The young Parasaurolophus runs out of the jungle in terror, getting the attention of the other herbivores. The Carnotaur bursts out of the tree line to attack and lunges after the dinosaurs, smashing all but one of the eggs in an Iguanodon's nest in the process. Ultimately, the chase ends when the Carnotaur runs down and kills and eats an unfortunate Pachyrhinosaurus, the slowest herbivore of the group.
Like the other dinosaurs featured in the film, the Carnotaurus have been driven out of their usual habitat by the meteor strike, and a pair of them have decided to follow the herd so as to obtain food in the arid landscape. Shortly after Aladar and the lemurs join the herd, the two are seen scaring off a pack of like-minded Velociraptors from the remains of a . The hunters then continue tracking the herd, which Aladar and his adoptive lemur family have recently joined, feeding on the dead, weak, wounded, and stragglers. 
Later, Bruton and a dinosaur scout are attacked and ambushed by the Carnotaurus while searching for water. Bruton escapes, albeit injured, to warn Kron while the scout is dragged off and devoured. Kron leaves the injured Bruton behind to fend for himself, blaming him for unintentionally leading the predators to the rest of the herd. That night, the Carnotaurs stop for water before noticing new tracks in the distance and resuming their hunt.
Later, as Aladar, his family, friends and Bruton take shelter from a rainstorm in a cave, the Carnotaurs inevitably discover them and attack. Bruton comes to the rescue and sacrifices himself by causing a cave-in, burying the smaller Carnotaur. The larger Carnotaur survives, however, roaring vengefully before setting off after the herd.
After Aladar and company find the Nesting Grounds, Aladar rushes off by himself back to warn Kron's herd about the rock pile and ravine blocking the main entrance. On the way there, he sees a dead Stygimoloch and quickly hides when he hears the Carnotaur coming to eat it. Aladar manages to slip away, unaware that he has drawn the predator's attention.
The next day, Aladar reaches the herd and tries to warn Kron that their usual entrance into the Nesting Grounds has been blocked by a rockslide. Kron refuses to listen, and attacks Aladar, only to be knocked down by Neera. Aladar then assumes leadership of the herd to take Kron's place. Unfortunately, the Carnotaur arrives a moment later and the cornered herd begins to panic. Kron berates Aladar for leading the carnivore to them and calls for the other dinosaurs to flee up the rocks. But Aladar orders the herd to stand together, as the hunter will only pick them off if they scatter. Aladar bravely takes the lead, confronting the much larger predator head-on. The Carnotaur is at first unfazed by the smaller dinosaur's defiance, but when Neera and the rest of the herd join in, the predator finds itself overwhelmed and backs down. However, it spots Kron, who has stubbornly scrambled off on his own, and chases after him. Kron climbs the rocks only to find himself facing a cliff, and the Carnotaur corners him. Kron fights back, but the hunter sinks its teeth into his back and hurls him against a rock, mortally wounding him. As it is about to finish him off, Neera comes and assaults the Carnotaur in an attempt to save her brother, but is quickly overpowered. The Carnotaur then prepares to finish Neera, but Aladar arrives in time and manages to push the Carnotaur to the edge of the cliff. As the Carnotaur turns to face him, its massive weight causes the cliff ledge to crumble. As the ledge starts to crack, the Carnotaur grabs Aladar and tries to drag him down along with it, but fails, and the predator falls to its death on the jagged rocks below.
==Video games==
===Disney's Dinosaur===
The Carnotaurus return as the main antagonists in the video game version of the movie; they are unkillable and can only be defeated by completing a set of tasks that lure them into deadly traps.
==Disney Parks==
===DINOSAUR===
In the ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom, a Carnotaurus is encountered four times, in addition to a Carnotaurus sculpture appearing on the sign for the attraction, and the animal's presence can be felt early on in the queue.
Within the Dino Institute there is a giant (replica) Carnotaurus skeleton that is the centerpiece of one part within the queue. It is likely that this skeleton is intended to be of the dinosaur encountered in the ride. A sign underneath the skeleton explains its beefed-up size and misplaced location through a museum sign labeling it as a Floridian subspecies known as Robustus Floridaensis.
The first time the Carnotaurus is directly encountered is when the Time Rover's computer locks onto a large dinosaur, although it is not the Iguanodon, the dinosaur meant to be captured. When the Time Rover reaches the targeted dinosaur, the computer identifies it as a Carnotaurus. It roars at the riders, but they safely get away.
In the second encounter, lightning flashes to reveal the Carnotaurus. As it runs towards the guests, the Time Rover flees. After turning left and right many times to avoid meteor strikes, the Carnotaurus is encountered again, rearing to its full height and roaring loudly. Luckily, the riders in the Time Rover escape.
The last encounter is just seconds before the killer asteroid hits the Earth. The Carnotaurus lunges at the guests just as they make it through to the present day as the asteroid marks the extinction of the dinosaurs, including the Carnotaurus.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*The Carnotaurus was first seen in the 1998 Disney's Animal Kingdom commercial on The Lion King II: Simba's Pride VHS.
*In Dinosaur, Carnotaurus was shown to be much bigger than it was in real life. The film shows it to be as big as the Tyrannosaurus rex by naming it Carnotaur. In actuality, Carnotaurus sastrei was smaller; roughly about 9–10 feet tall and 26–29 feet long (while Tyrannosaurus was 13–15 feet tall and 40–50 feet in length), thus making Carnotaurus slightly larger than Iguanodon, the main dinosaur of the movie. The real-life animal was also far lighter in build than its movie counterpart, having disproportionately long legs meant for high speed running as opposed to close quarters brawling the film version uses. Additionally, the arms of the film's Carnotaurus are longer and more opposable than the arms of a real Carnotaurus, whose arms were barely used if at all and resembled small hands sticking from their sides.
**According to the behind-the-scenes features on the DVD, the Carnotaurus is at least 15 feet tall in the movie.
**The skeleton of Carnotaurus Robustus Floridaensis in the lobby for the ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom is a casting made by combining elements of cast material from a Tyrannosaurus rex and scaled up casts of actual Carnotaurus sastrei material.
**Carnotaurus in real life may have preferred to hunt small animals, owing to its small skull and inferior bite force compared to the likes of Tyrannosaurus and other larger theropods; however, it may have also preyed upon bigger animals.
**Another inaccuracy is that while the Carnotaurs in the movie are very big, bulky animals, the real-life Carnotaurus was a very slim animal, almost like a cheetah with long, gracile legs.
***Added to this, Carnotaurus was also very fast and had a thick, stiff tail for powering its running abilities. As such, it could not use its tail to strike another dinosaur, as the larger Carnotaurus did to Aladar in the film during their battle.
****This would have also prohibited any pivotal turns.
**The snout of the Disney Carnotaurus is much more prolonged and broader than the snout of the Carnotaurus in real life which is often compared to that of a bulldog as well as more robust.
**The Carnotaur is given a much more articulated body in the film, heavily inspired by the T. rex. Contrary to popular belief, Carnotaurus was not a typical theropod dinosaur, as its family (Carnotaurinae) developed separately from the group in the then-isolated South America from different ancestors. It is often put forward by scientists to have had a relatively simply body which would have looked like a sausage with long legs and a mouth at the end.
**Even with the rationalization that the Carnotaurus in the attraction is a Floridian sub-species, it is unknown how the Carnotaurus would have come to inhabit there. The reason behind this is because, during the Cretaceous Period, the continents which would become South America and North America were separated by two coastal seas and a straight in the Atlantic Ocean. Carnotaurus was naturally indigenous to South America's tropics with its features (such as bumpy, exposed skin) being adapted to this tropical ecosystem while what would become Florida was located far up in the northern hemisphere and completely submerged by a passage known as the Suwannee Straits. In a 2019 Twitter post, Joe Rohde has offered the explanation of a series of long since eroded islands within the shallow seas being a means for species exchange between the two continents, though this conceit isn't referenced in DinoLand's propping itself.Twitter
**The theory that Carnotaurus was covered in robust, crocodile-like scales was disputed in 2021 upon examination of the skin impressions showing that the larger scales would have been randomly distributed with the scales overall resembling more typical avian or lizard-like scales.
**The tips of the tails of Carnotaurus are similar to those of the armadillo lizard.
*During the production of both the movie and the ride, original plans called for the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, but Disney decided to incorporate the lesser popular Carnotaurus instead, as its demonic appearance made it fitting for the role of the main antagonist and it wasn't a well-known animal at the time.
**However, many fans and viewers often mistake the Carnotaurus portrayed in the film for T. rex due to their large size. They even nearly resemble a devil-like T. rex in appearance. Carnotaurus do have many differences from T. rex, such as smaller, useless arms, its obvious horns, and shorter snout.
*The canyon scenes were possibly set in the Americas because Carnotaurus and several (not Iguanodon) were discovered in Argentina. The death spots of the two were in South America and the rest of the film most likely takes place in North America (the nesting grounds), Asia (the desert), and Europe (the original nesting ground/land).
*In Dinosaur, this was the only dinosaur that did not speak throughout the film, not counting the opening scene.
**The vocal effects were composed by Christopher Boyes, a former colleague, and sound engineer of Gary Rydstrom. For the Carnotaurus, the sound designs were based on the roars of big cats, pigs, crocodilians, etc.
*The second, smaller Carnotaurus is perhaps the larger one's mate. It is also possible given their size differences, that the larger Carnotaur is the smaller one's parent. Though according to designer David Krentz, they were both always referred as "he", since their relationship was not considered.
*Aside from size, the appearance of Carnotaurus is nearly accurate in most regards; as skin impressions are known from Carnotaurus, its appearance can be shown with relative confidence.
**With that being said, however, the armor plating (also known as osteoderms) was not spiked; instead they were smooth and small.
*Deleted scenes depicting Bruton and his scouts' attack by the Carnotaurus indicate that there were originally supposed to be three Carnotaurs instead of two.
*Original storyboards also indicate that the Carnotaurs were responsible for the deaths of the discarded characters that were Noah's (an old name concept for Aladar) grandparents. The creatures also were originally given a much more uncanny role as almost a dinosaur Grim Reaper, some notes saying they'd almost never vocalize and have a habit of sneaking up on characters.
*The Carnotaurus on the DINOSAUR ride has a Hidden Mickey on its forehead when encountered the first time.
**The mural of the dinosaur in the gift shop at the end of the ride has one in the dewlap of its neck.
*After its appearance in DINOSAUR, the Carnotaurus would later appear in other media; it has also appeared in the 2016 Universal Pictures animated film , as well as the 2018 Universal live-action movie . Before this, however, the dinosaur also appeared in 's book , where they developed the ability to turn practically invisible. Carnotaurus would also later appear in the video game adaptions of the franchise under the same name.
**The Carnotaurus in the latter films look similar to the ones in Dinosaur.
*The roar sound effects of Carnotaurus were used for Lizzie in the 2018 live-action film .
==References==
==External links==
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