Creature Feature: Carnotaurus

OK, I gipped you guys yesterday and the day before. Here's a cool entry to make up for my doing nothing but quoting a newspaper and a disgusting YouTube video.

Let's look at Dinosaur Satan for a minute. Dinosaur Satan, properly called Carnotaurus sastrei, was found in an Argentinian deposit dating back to the Late Cretaceous. As the name "meat-eating bull" would indicate, it was a giant, carnivorous beast with pointy horns. It was roughly 8 meters from head to tail and a little over 3 meters high. We don't know what it ate beyond "meat," but large sauropods may have been on the menu.

The Carnotaurus is probably the last dinosaur you would ever want to see in a dark alley. It's big, its mouth is full of teeth, and it can turn its head unlike any other theropod. It had binocular vision, which means, yes, both eyes would be sizing you up like a cheeseburger. Oh, and then there are those horns. Nobody knows what those horns were for, but after the teeth and the front-facing eyes, would you really want to risk being skewered by them? Didn't think so.

Then it would come out farther and you'd see its hands. Carnotaurus had the most useless forelimbs of any dinosaur, even compared to the weird two-fingered hands of T.rex. They had four digits total, but only two were functional. Even those lacked claws and were largely vestigial in nature. One may have been a combat spur, but the range would be very poor.The limbs on Carnotaurus do not even have joints.



What Carnotaurus lacked in dexterity it made up for in speed. Look at a good drawing and it's easy to see that Carnotaurus was built like an ostrich. Long neck, legs, and tail mean that it was built for speed. There's a chance that it was the fastest non-avian dino to ever walk the earth, running at up to speeds of 31 m.p.h (50 km/h).

Although Carnotaurus had a lot in common with feathered dinosaurs, we actually have a good record of this dinosaur's skin.  Unlike some other large carnivores, the sample of Carnotaurus skin we have is rough and bumpy - more like a lizard's than a bird's. Like the skin of an alien crocodile, This thing was not only fast, it was armored. In other words, Carny is prime dragon fodder.

This potential has not gone unnoticed by filmmakers. The main antagonist in Dinosaur was a Carnotaurus. Jurassic Park II, the book only,  also had a Carnotaurus in it. Alas, it lacks the 'true terror' status...so far.

Creature Feature: Therizinosaurus.

It is now widely known that dinosaurs had feathers. As such, many of our perceptions of nasty carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor have been considered outdated and forever tarnished. It's hard to take Velociraptor seriously when it looks like a chicken.

It would, however, make a very good backup dancer in "Thriller." Or whatever Gaga comes out with next.

The weirdness of feathered dinosaurs does not stop there. Picture that raptor with a long neck like a sauropod. Add a dragging tail. Turn those killer claws on the raptor's feet into Freddy-esque talons on its forelimbs. Finally, make it huge, just to scare the sh*t out of the puny humans who would discover it eons later. If we have described it well enough, it should look something like this:

 

That is a real dinosaur. Or, well, it's a restoration of what was a real dinosaur. Its name was Therizinosaurus. Although there were many therizinosaurs, the one that gave its name to the genus, Therizinosaurus cheloniformis, was the biggest at 30-40 feet (making it one of the largest theropods - just sayin').  It was found, much like many feathered dinosaurs, in the Cretaceous Period of China. Small wonder that dragons receive such praise in that area.

 

Therizinosaurus literally means "scythe lizard." When this creature was first found, the only part paleontologists had were the massive claws later identified as this dinosaur's fingers. A single claw on this beast was around 3 feet long. If Jurassic Park revived one of these, it would probably skewer a few innocent spectators quite without meaning to.



Although those giant claws looked intimidating, if the skulls of other Therizinosaurs are any indication, T. cheloniformis was an herbivore. A massive, clawed herbivore. Those claws may have been used to slash predators, as a form of showing how well-endowed a male was, or for holding down foliage. Even feathers and being an herbivore cannot tone down the awesomeness of those claws. Remember what we've said about herbivores needing to be badass? Yes? All right then.