Horns like a bull
It is the only meat-eating dinosaur known with a pair of thick horns above its eyes.
The great hunters · Theropods
Carnotaurus
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.
- Size
- About 8m long; 1.5 to 2 tonnes
- Lived
- About 71 to 69 million years ago
- Found in
- Patagonia, Argentina
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To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the carnotaurus
The smallest arms of all
Its arms were even smaller than a Tyrannosaurus's, with hardly any forearm and four stubby fingers.
We know its skin
Its skeleton was found with large areas of skin impressions: pebbly scales with rows of bigger bumps.
Built for speed
Huge muscles at the base of its tail powered its legs. It may have been one of the fastest big hunters.
Known from one skeleton
Everything we know comes from a single, nearly complete skeleton found in 1984.
Eyes facing forwards
Its eyes faced partly forwards, giving it some sense of depth.
The real thing
Photos of the carnotaurus
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Smaller plant-eating dinosaurs, caught at a run.
How we know
The one skeleton is among the best preserved of any large meat-eater, skin and all.
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