🦖 Dinosaurs🦖 TheropodJurassicWell known
Ceratosaurus
Ceratosaurus nasicornis
The nearly complete skeleton from Garden Park is still the best specimen and helps to understand the ceratosaurs, a separate branch of the theropods.
Image: Jens Lallensack · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Loading map textures; the previous reconstruction stays visible...
Sites on today's globe · 1 marker
Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Ceratosaurus nasicornis
- Period
- Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian)
- Lived
- 155–148 Ma (155 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Plains, Forest
- Length (estimate)
- 6 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 600 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1884 · Othniel Charles Marsh (description)
Description
Ceratosaurus was a medium-sized predatory dinosaur with a horn on its snout, bony ridges above the eyes and a row of small bony plates along its back. Its teeth were remarkably long. It lived alongside larger predators such as Allosaurus.
Habitat
River-rich plains of the Morrison Formation in western North America.
Fossil sites
Garden Park, Colorado
Morrison Formation
Cultural profile: United States →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Ceratosaurus