This page has six of the great meat-eaters of the Cretaceous. They never met: they lived on different continents and millions of years apart. Move your pointer and one will follow you. Choose a different one at the bottom, and tap the notes to open them.
Its bite was the most powerful of any land animal known. It could crush bone.
Its arms were only about a metre long, but each could probably lift a couple of hundred kilograms.
The biggest teeth were around 20 centimetres long, counting the root.
The most complete skeletons have nicknames. Sue, in Chicago, is about 90 per cent complete.
It lived right at the end, and was there when the asteroid struck.
It had forward-facing eyes for judging distance, and an excellent sense of smell.
Meet them all
Tyrant lizard king · tie-RAN-oh-SORE-us REX
A huge hunter with an enormous head, teeth the size of bananas, powerful hind legs and tiny two-fingered arms.
Swift thief · veh-LOSS-ih-RAP-tor
A turkey-sized, feathered hunter with a long, narrow snout, a stiff tail and a curved claw on each foot.
Spine lizard · SPINE-oh-SORE-us
A giant hunter with a long, crocodile-like snout and a tall sail of skin along its back.
Giant southern lizard · JIG-ah-NOT-oh-SORE-us
An enormous hunter with a long skull, rough ridges along its snout and three-fingered hands.
Meat-eating bull · KAR-no-TORE-us
A fast hunter with a short, deep head, a thick horn over each eye and absurdly tiny arms.
Heavy claw · BARE-ee-ON-ix
A long-snouted hunter with a crocodile-like head and a huge curved claw on each thumb.
Good to know
Blade-like teeth with saw edges are for slicing meat. Cone-shaped ones are for gripping fish.
Fossils from China show that many meat-eaters, including relatives of Tyrannosaurus, were feathered.
Scans of their skulls show large areas of the brain given over to smell.
Small hunters were quick. The giants probably managed a brisk jog, not a sprint.
Tooth marks on bones show who ate whom, and healed ones show who got away.
Films put them together, but these six lived on different continents at different times.
The Cretaceous: 2 more places
Real fossils, skeletons and museum models of the animals on this page. Tap one to see it bigger.
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons and are used under free licences. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews. Open a photo to see who took it.
Big hunters were always rare. For every Tyrannosaurus there were dozens of plant-eaters, which is why their skeletons are such prizes.
Back to the topAnimals from other periods live on their own pages: choose another.