Carnotaurus

***Carnotaurus*** (meaning *meat eating bull*) was a large bipedal dinosaur which lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous Period. It is a relative of other theropod dinosaurs such as *Abelisaurus*, *Majungasaurus*, *Ceratosaurus*, and *Rajasaurus*. *Carnotaurus* lived in Patagonia, Argentina about 80 million years ago, and was discovered by José F. Bonaparte, who has discovered many other bizarre, South American dinosaurs.

## Description

*Carnotaurus* was a large theropod and one of the largest abelisaurs, about 7-9 meters in length, and between 2-3 tons in weight. Abelisaurids have odd features in their heads, as *Carnotaurus* had two large brow horns over its eyes, while its smaller relative *Majungasaurus* had highly bizarre looking knob on its head. The Ceratosaurus had a few horns on its head also. It is probably the fastest running theropod, reaching a speed of up to 40 mph.

### Front limbs morphology

Abelisaurids also have very reduced forelimbs with four or five fingers. In particular, the arms of *Carnotaurus*, when compared to their body size, were far smaller than even than those of *Tyrannosaurus* and were completely useless, and possibly the smallest forelimbs in whole animal kingdom compared to body mass. Hands of this creature had four very small fingers, and only two of them actually had bones.

### Skull and jaws

*Carnotaurus* had one of most bizarre skulls among the dinosaur world. He had big bony bumps, morphologically similar to horns of the modern bull above the orbital openings. It's likely that he didn't use them to fight, because they were really small and blunt, so they cannot leave any serious damage. He perhaps used these bumps to attract mate during the mating season.

Skull was also very light built, with large preorbital opening. Some paleontologists think this large opening may have cooled *Carnotaurus* skull or blood. Shape of skull itself was very strange, too. Skull was relatively thin and flattened from the sides, allowing animal to move head very quick and possible even attack during running.

*Carnotaurus* had a very big postorbital area of skull, allowing him to bite very strong. According to paleontologist Robert Bakker, so-called "rottweiler effect" makes an animal's bite powerful. The "rottweiler effect" is especially large back part of the skull (postorbitlal area) where jaw muscles are located. The bigger the postorbital area - the stronger the bite force. Also, *Carnotaurus's*teeth are very unique design - they were very wide, and relatively blunt, resembling the railroad spike. These teeth are very suitable for crushing bone, making this carnivore's bite enormously lethal.

His relatively large eyes were positioned right at the front of the skull, giving him binocular and tro-dimensional vision, what's pretty unusual in Dinosauria.

### Skin and feathersedit | edit source

A single nearly complete skeleton has been described, including a large skin print on the right side of the specimen, covering the head, arms, torso and legs, showing us much about its skin. It shows us that it was covered in circular non overlapping scales, with osteoderms running down the length of the back.

The type species *Carnotaurus sastrei* is the only known species, though it is related to other Abelisaurids from Madagascar, Argentina, India, and North Africa.