🦖 Dinosaurs🦖 TheropodCretaceousLesser known
Majungasaurus
Majungasaurus crenatissimus
Majungasaurus is one of the best-known dinosaurs of the southern hemisphere and a key to the abelisaurids.
Image: Skye McDavid · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Majungasaurus crenatissimus
- Period
- Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian)
- Lived
- 70–66 Ma (70 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Plains, Freshwater
- Length (estimate)
- 6.5 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 1,100 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1896 · Charles Depéret (first description)
Description
Majungasaurus was an abelisaurid predatory dinosaur with a short, broad snout, a knob on its head and tiny forelimbs. Bones of its own species bear tooth marks that match its teeth: one of the clearest signs of cannibalism in dinosaurs. It lived until shortly before the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.
Habitat
Seasonally dry river plains in north-western Madagascar.
Fossil sites
Berivotra, Mahajanga
Maevarano Formation
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Majungasaurus