#Skeleton middle finger drawing skin#

#Skeleton middle finger drawing skin#

Unusually, it is preserved with extensive skin impressions. It was found lying on its right side, showing a typical death pose with the neck bent back over the torso. The skeleton belonged to an adult individual, as indicated by the fused sutures in the braincase. The skeleton is well-preserved and articulated (still connected together), with only the posterior two thirds of the tail, much of the lower leg, and the hind feet being destroyed by weathering.

It was the eighth expedition within the project named 'Jurassic and Cretaceous Terrestrial Vertebrates of South America', which started in 1976 and was sponsored by the National Geographic Society. This expedition also recovered the peculiar spiny sauropod Amargasaurus. The only skeleton ( holotype MACN-CH 894) was unearthed in 1984 by an expedition led by Argentinian paleontologist José Bonaparte. Carnotaurus was probably well adapted for running and was possibly one of the fastest large theropods.ĭiscovery Mount of Carnotaurus at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Its brain cavity suggests an acute sense of smell, while hearing and sight were less well developed. The feeding habits of Carnotaurus remain unclear: some studies suggested the animal was able to hunt down very large prey such as sauropods, while other studies found it preyed mainly on relatively small animals. According to separate studies, rivaling individuals may have combated each other with quick head blows, by slow pushes with the upper sides of their skulls, or by ramming each other head-on, using their horns as shock absorbers. The distinctive horns and the muscular neck may have been used in fighting conspecifics. The mosaic was interrupted by large bumps that lined the sides of the animal, and there are no hints of feathers. The skeleton is preserved with extensive skin impressions, showing a mosaic of small, non-overlapping scales approximately 5 mm in diameter. Carnotaurus was further characterized by small, vestigial forelimbs and long, slender hind limbs. It had thick horns above the eyes, a feature unseen in all other carnivorous dinosaurs, and a very deep skull sitting on a muscular neck. As a theropod, Carnotaurus was highly specialized and distinctive. Within the Abelisauridae, the genus is often considered a member of the Brachyrostra, a clade of short-snouted forms restricted to South America.Ĭarnotaurus was a lightly built, bipedal predator, measuring 7.5 to 8 m (24.6 to 26.2 ft) in length and weighing 1.3–2.1 metric tons (1.4–2.3 short tons 1.3–2.1 long tons). Carnotaurus is a derived member of the Abelisauridae, a group of large theropods that occupied the large predatorial niche in the southern landmasses of Gondwana during the late Cretaceous. The skeleton, found in 1984, was uncovered in the Chubut Province of Argentina from rocks of the La Colonia Formation. Known from a single well-preserved skeleton, it is one of the best-understood theropods from the Southern Hemisphere.

'meat bull') is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period, probably sometime between 71 and 69 million years ago. Carnotaurus ( / ˌ k ɑːr n oʊ ˈ t ɔːr ə s/ lit.