Dino card No. 0373 of 2,015

Ceratosuchops

Say it: SEH-rah-too-SOPS

Name means: “horned crocodile face”1

Ate: MeatSpinosaursEarly Cretaceous

Ceratosuchops was a meat-eating dinosaur with a crocodile-like face and bumpy horns above its eyes. It lived near rivers and probably hunted fish and other animals, just like a heron does today.1

Lived

126 to 121 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Isle of Wight, England, UK1

Food

Meat2

Length

8 to 9 m2

estimate based on related spinosaurids

Weight

1 tonnes to 2 tonnes2

Height

2 to 3 m2

at the hips

Artist's life restoration of Ceratosuchops — How Ceratosuchops may have looked, by Connor Ashbridge. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Ceratosuchops was named in 2021, making it a very recently discovered dinosaur.2

Its name means 'horned crocodile face' because of the bumpy horns above its eyes and its long, crocodile-like snout.1

It lived about 125 to 121 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period.2

Ceratosuchops belonged to a group of spinosaurid dinosaurs that often had crocodile-like skulls and may have eaten fish.1

Its fossils were found on the Isle of Wight, a famous place for dinosaur discoveries in England.1

Scientists think Ceratosuchops lived near rivers and hunted like a modern heron, wading in shallow water to catch prey.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Ceratosuchops
Named by: Barker et al. 20213
Group: Spinosaurs
Family / clade: Spinosauridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Spinosauridae3
Age of the rocks: 126 to 121 million years (Barremian)3
Rock formations: Wessex3
Countries: United Kingdom3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Ceratosuchops was named by Barker and colleagues in 2021 based on fossils found on the Isle of Wight, England, between 2013 and 2017.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Ceratosuchops grew, because only a few skull bones have been found so far.2

Where the facts come from

New spinosaurids from the Wessex Formation (Early Cretaceous, UK) and the European origins of Spinosauridae (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Ceratosuchops 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 hello@dinowiki.app and we will fix it.