Indexer
Carnotaurus was a therapod dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous era about 75 to 70 million years ago. Fossils have been found in Argentina, the first discovery being made in 1985.
Carnotaurus was a medium-sized dinosaur at 8 to 9 metres in length, weighing around one ton.
The skull was relatively tall from top to bottom but short from front to back, which accounts for its name which translates as ‘meat-eating bull’ in reference to the appearance of its head.
(Public domain image created by “rroobboo 999”)
Carnotaurus had two small horn-like projections above the eyes, and a row of scales along the spine that produced a series of regularly placed lumps.
Carnotaurus was similar to Tyrannosaurus in that it had tiny ‘arms’ for which the use is difficult to envisage – they would have been too short to reach the animal’s mouth.
Although Carnotaurus was clearly a meat-eater, its teeth and jaws were not particularly large or powerful. This suggests that it would have preyed on smaller plant-eating dinosaurs.
I’m thinking that some or much of its diet could have been through scavenging. I know that is still controversial, with many people thinking that dinosaurs like this were strictly predatory.
It always amazes me how much is assumed about the lives and habits of dinosaurs from so little evidence, given that for many of them only a few fossil fragments have ever been discovered. Mind you, that is nothing to the amazement I get when I hear Creationists telling us that they were all on Noah’s Ark but had a nasty accident shortly afterwards!
I’m a creationist, but I don’t subscribe to the view of dinosaurs on the Ark. My belief, supported by the evidence, is that dinosaurs were extinct long before man or the Ark. In fact, the evidence is that 99% of all animal species that ever lived became extinct before man was created. This isn’t refuted by the Bible, though admittedly, this isn’t of the slightest concern to the Bible.
I agree about suppositions being made with barely even circumstantial evidence. Just because T. Rex, Allosaurus, etc, had predatory teeth, assuming that they all did, doesn’t mean that they weren’t primarily scavengers. Hyenas of today have predatory teeth and scavenge when they can, though they are capable of hunting and are quite skilled. For that matter, musk deer have fangs, yet they are vegetarian. For all we know, many of the dinosaurs thought to be predators were actually omnivores or even herbivores. We simply don’t know for sure.
We know that evolution has produced some strange results. Pandas only eat bamboo, but they are fully equipped to be carnivores – anyone in the far future who discovered a panda fossil would assume the latter. So maybe we are wrong about some of our conclusion re dinosaur species, which must have evolved over millions of years.