The horned Ceratosaurus is one of the most distinctive meat-eating dinosaurs. This medium-sized predator lived in North America and Europe during the Jurassic, around 150 million years ago.
History
Ceratosaurus was named in 1884 by the eminent American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale University. Marsh based his description on an almost complete skeleton from Colorado. In reference to its most distinctive feature, Marsh named it Ceratosaurus, meaning ‘horned lizard’, and gave it the species name C. nasicornis, meaning ‘ornamental nose’.
Most Ceratosaurus fossils come from the 150-million-year-old Morrison Formation in Colorado and Utah, USA. Three other species of Ceratosaurus have been named, including C. dentisulcatus, from Utah and Portugal; and C. magnicornis, from Colorado. However, some paleontologists regard these species as invalid. Instead, they suggest that these slightly different species are really variants of C. nasicornis, possibly due to changes in the skeleton that occurred as the animals matured.
Maybe Ceratosaurus preferred a diet of small prey.