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Foreign.
Explore the Carnotaurus, the fastest carnivorous dinosaur, its anatomy, hunting strategies, and unique features from fossil evidence.
Key Takeaways
- Carnotaurus was one of the fastest carnivorous dinosaurs, adapted for speed rather than brute strength.
- Its unique horns were likely used for intraspecies competition, not hunting.
- The dinosaur’s hunting strategy may have included both fast bites on small prey and cutting attacks on larger animals.
- The discovery of skin impressions provides rare insight into theropod integument.
- Carnotaurus occupied a top predator niche after the extinction of larger carnivores in its habitat.
What the video covers
- Carnotaurus was a fast theropod dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous period, living about 72 to 69.9 million years ago in Argentina.
- It was smaller than giants like T-Rex but faster, reaching speeds up to 56 km/h due to its long legs and large caudofemoralis muscle.
- The species is known from a single, partially weathered skeleton discovered in 1984 in Chubut, Argentina.
- Carnotaurus had a slender body, weighing between 1.35 to over 2 tons, comparable to a large hippopotamus but more elongated.
- Its arms were very small and functionless, unlike other theropods, while its skull was short, deep, and featured distinctive thick conical horns above the eyes.
- The horns likely had keratin sheaths and were used for dominance or courtship rather than ramming or impaling prey.
- Carnotaurus had a better-developed sense of smell than vision and a relatively weak but fast bite, suggesting it hunted small, nimble prey or possibly large animals by cutting.
- Its skin impressions show a mosaic of five-millimeter angular scales, a rare preservation for large theropods.
- Despite its smaller size compared to other Argentinian theropods, Carnotaurus was the top predator in its ecosystem after the extinction of larger carnivores.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Disney's Dinosaurs Scene
- 01:50Carnotaurus Overview and Speed
- 03:23Fossil Discovery and Geological Context
- 04:13Size, Weight, and Physical Characteristics
- 05:02Speed and Locomotion Adaptations
- 05:52Horns and Skull Features
- 06:59Horns Function and Behavior Theories
- 08:10Bite Force and Hunting Strategies
- 08:55Skin Impressions and Ecological Role
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Who still remembers this great scene from Disney's masterpiece Dinosaurs? Unlike ordinary computer-animated films, the scenes were not created entirely in the computer but are a combination of real nature footage and computer animation, sometimes augmented by physical special effects such as real explosions.
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But today, it's not about the film but about the terrifying antagonist, the Carnotaurus. Watch the video until the end because we will tell you a fact about the Carnotaurus that you would not have expected.
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Enjoy the video. Carnotaurus, the carnivorous bull, was an extraordinary dinosaur in many respects. Although it did not have the impressive body dimensions of a T-Rex or Giganotosaurus, it was more dangerous to some prey than the giants because
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Carnotaurus was one of the fastest theropods that ever existed. Some call it the cheetah of the Cretaceous, and this comparison is not as far-fetched as one might think. Why the Carnotaurus was so fast and how it lived, we will have a closer look in
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this video. Everything we know about this theropod comes from a single skeleton. It is located in Argentina, in the province of Chubut. The fossil was recovered in 1984 during a terrestrial expedition that studied terrestrial vertebrates of South America from the Jurassic and Cretaceous
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periods. Unfortunately, the skeleton was not quite complete because weathering destroyed the lower parts of the legs as well as the rear part of the tail. However, there was enough left to describe a new species and far more than
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in many other species of which we sometimes have only a few bones. Carnotaurus lived during the Upper Cretaceous from 72 million years ago to 69.9 million years ago, so this species died out a few million years before the Cretaceous-Paleogene
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boundary, which marks the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The skeleton is from an adult Carnotaurus, which can be deduced from the degree of fusion of the bone sutures of the cranium. The length of the dinosaur could be
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estimated well despite a missing part of the tail. Experts estimate a total length of 8 to 9 meters. Thus, the carnivorous bull was one of the largest representatives of its group, Abelisauridae. The estimation of the weight is a little
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bit more different depending on the method used. Low estimates made on the basis of the femur bone are 1.35 tons. Calculations using other methods, on the other hand, gave a weight of 1.5 to just over 2 tons. This meant that Carnotaurus had the same
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weight as an average or a large hippopotamus but distributed over twice the length and twice the height, and this, of course, results in a slender body. Especially the legs stand out, which were long and thin, a characteristic that many fast animals
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share, like, e.g., also the cheetahs with which the Carnotaurus is sometimes compared. With its long legs, the Carnotaurus was able to reach a speed of 56 kilometers per hour, according to studies. This is only half as fast as a cheetah
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but twice as fast as a T-Rex and still much faster than a Velociraptor in almost all other dinosaurs. The reason for this is the disproportionately large caudofemoralis muscle. This muscle pulls the thigh bone backward when contracted and was the most important locomotor
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muscle in dinosaurs. In contrast to the legs, however, the arms of this theropod had only 25% of the length of the upper arm, and the hands were very deformed. In contrast to other dinosaurs like the T-Rex, which could still hold things with
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its small arms or lift itself up, the arms of the Carnotaurus had no function at all. The most striking feature was the skull. With a length of 59.6 centimeters, it was proportionally shorter and deeper than any other carnivorous dinosaur.
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Horns protruded diagonally above the eyes, which of course gave the Carnotaurus its name. These horns were thick and conical, about 15 centimeters long and solid inside. Already in 1990, researchers suspected that around these horns, which were formed from the forehead bones, keratin sheaths were located. Since this material fossilizes only extremely badly, we do not know exactly how long the horns of a living Carnotaurus really were. So it is quite possible that the keratin horns were considerably longer than the
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bones that are left today. The artist Lindsay Wakefield has drawn such a Carnotaurus. It is intended more as an interesting concept than as a realistic representation. For example, the neck muscles are very strong in relation to the rest of the
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body and therefore could carry a higher weight of the head. Absurdly big horns like some Asian water buffaloes have would be very impractical for a fast hunter, so short to medium-length keratin sheaths are probably more likely. The strong neck and nape of the neck
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would, of course, also be able to withstand impacts. In many species today, horns and antlers are used for dominance fights within the own species, and maybe this was the case with Carnotaurus. Its neck muscles would be able to withstand collisions of two
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specimens running towards each other at about 20 kilometers per hour. However, the skull would not have withstood this for long. It is therefore more likely that these animals did not ram each other but pushed, similar to the way bison did. In
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doing so, the horns are pressed against each other, and then you push the opponent until one of them gives up. But there is also the theory that the horns were bent forward and used as a weapon. With such horns, the Carnotaurus
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could have impaled its victims with great speed. However, there is no other predator that has such a hunting method, which is why this theory is considered to be extremely improbable. More realistic are moderately long horns which were used for courtship or
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dominance fights within the own species. The size of olfactory bulbs in the ocular nerve suggest that Carnotaurus' sense of smell was much better developed than its visual perception. Because his eyes were turned forward to a certain degree, he could see
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binocularly. Which animals the carnivorous bull fed on is still quite controversial. By analyzing the structure of the jaws, it has been found out that the Carnotaurus was capable of quick bites but had a relatively weak bite force of
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3340 Newtons. When catching smaller marsupials, the fast bite is actually more important than the biting power, which has been proven by studies on crocodiles. However, some researchers doubt that the biting force of Carnotaurus was really so weak. For comparison,
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3340 Newtons is below the value of a gorilla, at above the value of a lion. However, hunting small animals with fast bites would make sense because, finally, the physique of the Carnotaurus was trimmed for speed and not for fighting
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power. This would have opened up a niche for this species to hunt small and nimble prey that would escape from the others. Due to the flexible jaws in the construction of the teeth, it could also hold small prey particularly well.
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Other scientists, however, assume the exact opposite and suspect that the Carnotaurus hunted particularly large animals in a similar way to Allosaurus and slowly brought them down piece by piece by cutting them. It is also possible that Carnotaurus used both
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hunting strategies to capture large sauropods as well as a variety of smaller animals. But there is one feature of this dinosaur's fossils that we have not yet looked at, and that is its skin. Carnotaurus was the first find of a
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large theropod in which the skin has survived relatively intact in the form of impressions on the side on which the dead Carnotaurus was lying. Its skin consisted of a mosaic of five-millimeter angular scales. In addition, a pointed predator, the most dangerous
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predator in its habitat, and that despite being much smaller than other theropods known from the area of Argentina. But the reason is quite simple: the really gigantic carnivorous dinosaurs of Argentina, such as Mapusaurus and Giganotosaurus, became extinct some
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millions of years earlier. The strongest predator a Carnotaurus encountered in its time was therefore always another Carnotaurus. But now w
Topics:Carnotaurusfastest dinosaurtheropodUpper Cretaceousdinosaur huntingdinosaur hornsdinosaur speedfossil skin impressionsArgentinian dinosaursAbelisauridae
