Abelisaurus
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| Abelisaurus Conservation status: Fossil | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Abelisaurus comahuensis Bonaparte & Novas, 1985 |
Abelisaurus (Abelisaurus comahuensis), (ay-bel-ih-SAWR-us) meaning “Abel’s lizard” (Named in honor of Robert Abel, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Argentina, + Greek sauros = lizard), was a species of ceratosaurian dinosaur. It was discovered by Othenio Abel, the director of the Argentinian Museum of Natural Science, and named by J.F. Bonaparte and F.E. Novas in 1985.
Abelisaurus has been found in Rio Negro in Argentina, and lived around 75 to 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period. It is known from a single incomplete, 33 inch (85 cm) long skull. It had unusually heavy teeth, and thus was possibly in part a scavenger.
Abelisaurus was a bipedal carnivore, a primitive theropod, standing around 6.6 feet (2 metres) tall at the hips, 21 to 26 feet (almost 8 meters) long and weighing 1.4 tons. These dimensions are estimates because postcranial remains of this dinosaur have not been described. Large fenestrae (window-like openings) in the Abelisaurus's skull meant that its skull was lighter than most dinosaurs'.
Abelisaurus may have been related to Carnotaurus, which also lived in Argentina over 70 million years ago, and perhaps to to Indosuchus.
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