Dino card No. 0473 of 2,015

Daemonosaurus

Say it: DEE-muh-noh-SORE-us

Name means: “demon lizard”1

Ate: MeatFirst dinosaursLate Triassic

Daemonosaurus was a meat-eating dinosaur that lived near the end of the Triassic Period. It had a strange skull with big front teeth that made it look a bit scary. It was one of the last early theropods before the Triassic ended.1

Lived

206 to 201 million years ago2

Late Triassic

Fossils found in

Ghost Ranch Quarry, New Mexico, USA2

Food

Meat1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Daemonosaurus had a skull with front teeth that stuck out forward, which is different from many other early theropods.1

It lived about 205 to 201 million years ago, right at the end of the Triassic Period.2

Daemonosaurus was a basal theropod, meaning it was one of the early meat-eating dinosaurs, but it survived until near the end of the Triassic.1

Its fossils were found in the Chinle Formation, a rock layer known for many Triassic animals.1

The name Daemonosaurus means 'demon lizard', which might make it sound scary, but it was probably not very big.1

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

Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Daemonosaurus was a big, fierce predator like T. rex.

Truth: Actually, Daemonosaurus was a small, early theropod, and scientists think it was more closely related to later theropods like Coelophysis than to giant predators.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Daemonosaurus
Named by: Sues et al. 20112
Group: First dinosaurs
Family / clade: Saurischia2
Age of the rocks: 206 to 201 million years (Rhaetian)2
Rock formations: Chinle2
Countries: USA2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Daemonosaurus was named by Hans-Dieter Sues and colleagues in 2011, based on fossils from the Ghost Ranch Quarry in New Mexico.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Daemonosaurus is related to other early theropods, because it has a mix of features from different groups.1

Where the facts come from

A late-surviving basal theropod dinosaur from the latest Triassic of North America | Proceedings B | The Royal Society (royalsocietypublishing.org)
Daemonosaurus 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.