Carnotaurus sastrei

Bonaparte, 1985
Original : MACN-CH 894. MNHN.F.AMS7
Dinosauria, Saurischia, Theropoda, Abelisauridae
Upper Cretaceous, Campanian-Maastrichtian, 70 million years ago
La Colonia Formation, Patagonia, Argentina

This almost complete skeleton was discovered in 1984 by Argentinian palaeontologist José Bonaparte. Carnotaurus (“carnivorous bull”) owes its name to the two large horns that grace the top of its skull. It belongs to the abelisauridae family, flesh-eating dinosaurs first discovered in the early 1980s. Today this family contains more than a dozen species.
Although they are not related to the tyrannosaurs, the abelisaurids played the same super-predator role. While, at the end of the Cretaceous period, tyrannosaurids had colonised Asia and North America, the abelisaurids occupied South America, Africa, India and Europe. Like Tyrannosaurus, Carnotaurus had atrophied forelimbs, but with 4 fingers not 2, a characteristic that differentiates it from its American counterpart.