Majungasaurus crenatissimus
Majungasaurus was a stocky predator with a short, deep and unusually broad skull. A thick, rounded dome of bone sat on top of its fused frontal bones like a blunt horn, and the whole surface of the skull was heavily sculpted and pitted, which in life almost certainly carried a covering of horny skin.
Majungasaurus
Majungasaurus crenatissimus
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Weight
750–1500 kg
Length
6–7 m
Diet
Carnivore
Period
Cretaceous
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750–1500 kg
6–7 m
Cretaceous
Bipedal
2–2.5 m
30 km/h
Carnivore
25 recorded fossil finds in Madagascar. First described in 1896 by Depéret.
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Majungasaurus lived.
million years ago
Lived 70–66 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Majungasaurus lived at 23:45.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Majungasaurus was a stocky predator with a short, deep and unusually broad skull. A thick, rounded dome of bone sat on top of its fused frontal bones like a blunt horn, and the whole surface of the skull was heavily sculpted and pitted, which in life almost certainly carried a covering of horny skin. Its arms were extraordinarily short, ending in four stubby fingers with barely developed claws, while its hind legs were built for power rather than speed. The body was covered in small pebbly scales, as preserved in the closely related Carnotaurus; there is no evidence of feathers in abelisaurids. At six to seven metres long and an estimated 750 to 1,500 kilograms, Majungasaurus was the apex predator of its island world.
Chapter • Where it lived
Majungasaurus lived roughly 70 to 66 million years ago, in the Maastrichtian stage at the very end of the Cretaceous, on what is now Madagascar. Its fossils come from the Maevarano Formation of the Mahajanga Basin in the north-west. The landscape was a semi-arid coastal lowland crossed by braided rivers that flooded in the wet season and shrank to dusty channels during a long dry season; many skeletons are buried in debris flows that swept whole carcasses together. Madagascar had already been an isolated island for tens of millions of years, which explains the strange local fauna of the titanosaur Rapetosaurus, the blunt-snouted crocodyliform Simosuchus and the bird Vorona.
Chapter • Wild behavior
There is no firm evidence that Majungasaurus lived in groups. Several individuals occur in the same bone beds, but flooding could easily have piled unrelated carcasses together. The clearest social signal is the tooth marks left by Majungasaurus on the bones of its own kind, proof that these animals fed on each other — although researchers cannot tell whether that means active killing of rivals or simply scavenging already dead individuals. Most likely they were largely solitary hunters that gathered only temporarily at large carcasses.
Majungasaurus is the only dinosaur for which cannibalism has been demonstrated: tooth marks on Majungasaurus bones match Majungasaurus teeth exactly.
For several years the animal was called Majungatholus atopus and mistaken for a dome-headed pachycephalosaur, until a near-complete skull found in 1996 revealed the dome belonged to a predator.
The species name crenatissimus means roughly 'the most notched', referring to the heavily serrated edges of its teeth.
Its arms were so short they barely reached past the ribcage and could not possibly bring food to the mouth.
Its vertebrae contain air-filled chambers linked to a bird-like system of air sacs, described in 2005.
The neck was short and enormously muscled, suggesting Majungasaurus bit and held on rather than slashing like Tyrannosaurus.
All good fossils come from the Maevarano Formation in north-western Madagascar, one of the richest windows into the very end of the Cretaceous.
Growth rings in its bones show slow growth and a lifespan of at least 20 years.
Chapter • Scientific place
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology / Taylor & Francis)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed memoir chapter establishing the taxonomic history and phylogenetic placement of Majungasaurus within Ceratosauria, Abelisauroidea and Abelisauridae.
Open sourceCretaceous Research (Elsevier)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Documents the fossil localities and stratigraphic subdivisions of the Maevarano Formation in the Mahajanga Basin of north-western Madagascar, the only known geographic and stratigraphic range of Majungasaurus.
Open sourceGeology (Geological Society of America)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Sedimentological study of the Maevarano Formation showing the seasonally arid, river-crossed coastal lowland setting and the debris flows that entombed whole vertebrate carcasses, including Majungasaurus.
Open sourceNature (Springer Nature)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Reports tooth-marked bones demonstrating that Majungasaurus (then named Majungatholus atopus) was a carnivore that fed on sauropods and on other individuals of its own species.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology / Taylor & Francis)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview page summarising the size, anatomy, age and Madagascan occurrence of Majungasaurus, used as the general description source.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview page summarising the size, anatomy, age and Madagascan occurrence of Majungasaurus, used as the general description source.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview page summarising the size, anatomy, age and Madagascan occurrence of Majungasaurus, used as the general description source.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview page summarising the size, anatomy, age and Madagascan occurrence of Majungasaurus, used as the general description source.
Open source