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Berberosaurus

Say it: BUR-bur-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Berber lizard”1

Ate: MeatMeat-eating dinosEarly Jurassic

Berberosaurus was an early meat-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Morocco. It was about as long as a car and weighed as much as a big lion. It may be the oldest known ceratosaur, a group of dinosaurs that includes the horned Ceratosaurus.1

Lived

193 to 175 million years ago2

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Toundoute, Ouarzazate, Morocco1

Food

Meat1 2

Length

4.58 to 5 m1

Weight

300 kg1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 10 big dogs

as long as 5 dogs nose to tailas long as 28 bananas end to endas heavy as 60 watermelons

How big was Berberosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Berberosaurus lived during the Early Jurassic, about 183 to 174 million years ago.1

Its fossils were found in a river floodplain that had wet and dry seasons, with ferns, cycads and conifers.1

The only known skeleton is from a subadult, so adults might have been a bit bigger.1

Berberosaurus had a neck vertebra with air spaces inside, making it lightweight.1

It lived alongside the sauropod Tazoudasaurus and a large unknown theropod.1

Some scientists think Berberosaurus is a basal ceratosaur, while others place it in different groups like dilophosaurids.1

AI-made picture of Berberosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Berberosaurus 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.

you asked

Most asked questions about Berberosaurus

?How big was Berberosaurus?

Berberosaurus was about 4.58 to 5 metres (15 to 16.4 feet) long and weighed around 300 kilograms (660 pounds), roughly the size of a car and as heavy as a big lion.1

?What did Berberosaurus eat?

Berberosaurus was a meat-eater. Like other ceratosaurians, it was a bipedal carnivore that hunted or scavenged for food.1

?Is Berberosaurus a dinosaur?

Yes, Berberosaurus is a dinosaur. It is a genus of neotheropod dinosaur, possibly a ceratosaur, from the Early Jurassic of Morocco.1

?When did Berberosaurus live?

Berberosaurus lived during the Early Jurassic, about 183 to 174 million years ago. That is during the Toarcian age.1

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Berberosaurus
Named by: Allain et al. 20072
Group: Meat-eating dinos
Family / clade: Ceratosauridae2
Classification: Theropoda > Ceratosauria2
Age of the rocks: 193 to 175 million years (Pliensbachian / Toarcian)2
Countries: Morocco2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Berberosaurus was named by Ronan Allain and colleagues in 2007, based on partial skeleton found in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether Berberosaurus is a ceratosaur, a dilophosaurid, or something else.1

Where the facts come from

Berberosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Berberosaurus 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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