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.
Scientific Name: Ceratosaurus nasicornis
Characteristics: Ceratosaurus was a slender carnivore with a distinctive large skull with a blade-like horn on its snout and a small horn over each eye. It walked on two long legs and had three-toed feet and sharp curved claws. It had very short but powerful arms with four-fingered hands, although only three fingers had claws.