Named after a goat herder
A farmer called Victorino Herrera found the first bones in 1959.
The first dinosaurs · Theropods
Herrerasaurus
Herrera's lizard · heh-RARE-ah-SORE-us
A sturdy early hunter with a long, narrow head, strong hind legs and clawed hands.
- Size
- 3 to 6m long; up to 350kg
- Lived
- About 231 million years ago
- Found in
- 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 herrerasaurus
A big hunter for its time
It was one of the largest meat-eaters among the earliest dinosaurs.
A sliding jaw
A joint in its lower jaw let it grip struggling prey more firmly.
Grasping hands
Its hands had three long, curved claws for holding on.
Not top of the chain
Giant crocodile-like reptiles lived alongside it, and bite marks show they attacked it.
Thirty years to find a skull
A complete skull was not found until 1988.
The real thing
Photos of the herrerasaurus
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
Other reptiles, including early plant-eaters. Its teeth were curved and saw-edged for slicing flesh.
How we know
Several skeletons from Argentina show its whole body, and a skull with tooth marks shows it was hunted too.
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