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Balaur

Say it: bah-LOWR

Name means: “stocky dragon”3

Ate: MeatRaptorsLate Cretaceous

Balaur was a small, fierce raptor that lived on an ancient island in what is now Romania. It had two big claws on each foot instead of one, and its arms were short and strong. Scientists think it was a top predator on its island home.1

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alba and Hunedoara counties, Romania2

Food

Meat3

Length

1.8 to 2.1 m1

estimated from the skeleton

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 house cats nose to tailas long as 12 bananas end to end

How big was Balaur compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Balaur had two sickle-shaped claws on each foot, unlike most raptors which have only one per foot.1

Its arms were very short and its hand bones were fused together, making its hands stiff and strong.1

Balaur lived on an island during the Late Cretaceous, about 72 to 66 million years ago.2

The first Balaur skeleton was found in Romania in 2010 and is the most complete predatory dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Europe.1

Balaur's closest relatives were raptors from Asia and North America, showing that animals could travel between continents even on islands.1

AI-made picture of Balaur — An AI-made picture of how Balaur might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Balaur
Named by: Csiki et al. 20103
Group: Raptors
Family / clade: Dromaeosauridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Dromaeosauridae3
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Densuș-Ciula, Sebeş3
Countries: Romania3
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Balaur was named by Zoltán Csiki, Mátyás Vremir, Stephen Brusatte and Mark Norell in 2010. The first fossil was found in the Sebeş Formation in Romania.3
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Balaur was a dromaeosaurid raptor or a more primitive type of bird-like dinosaur.1

Where the facts come from

An aberrant island-dwelling theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Romania (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Balaur in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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