The Horned Hunter of South America

About this drawing

To find a real carnotaurus and volcano landscape, you would have to head way down to Patagonia in Argentina. In the 1980s, scientists uncovered the only known skeleton of this dinosaur in Chubut Province. It was so well preserved that large patches of skin impressions survived with it.

Carnotaurus lived about 70 million years ago, and it looked like no other big meat eater. Two short, thick horns jutted out above its eyes like those of a bull. They may have been used in shoving matches with rivals, the way bighorn sheep clash in the Rockies today.

If you thought T-Rex arms were silly, wait until you see these. Compared with its body, they were even smaller, and the hands were little more than stubs with very short fingers. The skull was short and deep, and rows of bumps ran down its skin.

Where carnotaurus really stood out was in the legs. Huge muscles in its thighs and tail suggest it was one of the faster large predators of its day. South America had drifted away from the other continents by then, so dinosaurs there took their own path. That's why this hunter looks so different from anything that lived in North America.

• dinosaurs
• carnotaurus
• south america
• predators