Staurikosaurus pricei
Staurikosaurus was a small, lightly built predator barely two metres long from snout to tail tip, weighing about as much as a medium-sized dog. It carried its body horizontally over the hips, balanced by a long, stiffened tail that never touched the ground.
Staurikosaurus
Staurikosaurus pricei
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Weight
12–30 kg
Length
2–2.3 m
Diet
Carnivore
Period
Triassic
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12–30 kg
2–2.3 m
Triassic
Bipedal
50–80 cm
Carnivore
2 recorded fossil finds in Brazil. First described in 1970 by Colbert.
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 Staurikosaurus lived.
million years ago
Lived 233.2–231.4 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Staurikosaurus lived at 02:32.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Staurikosaurus was a small, lightly built predator barely two metres long from snout to tail tip, weighing about as much as a medium-sized dog. It carried its body horizontally over the hips, balanced by a long, stiffened tail that never touched the ground. The hind limbs were long and slender, and the shin bone was actually longer than the thigh bone – a proportion that in living animals goes hand in hand with fast, sustained running. The preserved portion of the jaw carries recurved, serrated teeth of the same general type found in later carnivorous dinosaurs. No feathers are known from any herrerasaurid, and researchers reconstruct Staurikosaurus with scaly or simply naked skin.
Chapter • Where it lived
Staurikosaurus lived in what is now Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, where its bones were recovered from the Alemoa Member of the Santa Maria Formation near the town of Santa Maria. In the late Triassic, roughly 233 million years ago, the region lay deep inside the supercontinent Pangaea. The setting was one of broad floodplains crossed by seasonal rivers, with pronounced dry spells and scattered stands of conifers and ferns. The same beds have yielded the pig-sized herbivorous reptile Hyperodapedon, dicynodonts and early cynodonts – plenty of prey and competitors for a small, fleet-footed dinosaur.
Chapter • Wild behavior
Almost nothing is known about the social life of Staurikosaurus. The species rests on a single incomplete skeleton, and there are no bone beds, trackways or nesting sites to show whether the animals moved alone or in groups. Claims of pack behaviour in herrerasaurids are speculation rather than evidence, and a solitary hunting lifestyle is assumed mainly because nothing contradicts it.
The name means roughly "Southern Cross lizard", after the constellation Crux in the southern sky.
The species name pricei honours Brazilian palaeontologist Llewellyn Ivor Price, who collected the fossil in 1936.
Although the bones were dug up in the 1930s, the animal was not formally described until 1970, by Edwin H. Colbert.
Staurikosaurus had only two vertebrae fused into the sacrum; most later dinosaurs have three or more.
The skeleton is far from complete: nearly the whole skull, the hands and the feet are missing, so many reconstructions are informed estimates.
At around 233 million years old, it is one of the oldest dinosaurs known to science.
The holotype is kept at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.
Its relative Herrerasaurus from Argentina is known from much better material and is routinely used to fill in the gaps in Staurikosaurus anatomy.
Chapter • Scientific place
Zootaxa (Magnolia Press)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed osteological redescription by Bittencourt & Kellner that establishes the phylogenetic position of Staurikosaurus pricei within Dinosauria, Saurischia, Herrerasauria and Herrerasauridae.
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Paleobiology Database taxon page listing the holotype MCZ 1669 and the recorded fossil occurrences and stratigraphic range of the species in the Santa Maria Formation of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Open sourceChemical Geology (Elsevier)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed reconstruction of the Late Triassic floodplain palaeoenvironment and climate of the Santa Maria Supersequence in southern Brazil, the setting in which Staurikosaurus lived.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum taxon profile classifying Staurikosaurus as a carnivorous early dinosaur from the Late Triassic of Brazil.
Open sourceGondwana Research (Elsevier)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceAmerican Museum of Natural History
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Colbert's original 1970 description naming Staurikosaurus pricei, providing the authoritative overview of the animal's anatomy, size and geological context.
Open sourceAmerican Museum of Natural History
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Colbert's original 1970 description naming Staurikosaurus pricei, providing the authoritative overview of the animal's anatomy, size and geological context.
Open sourceAmerican Museum of Natural History
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Colbert's original 1970 description naming Staurikosaurus pricei, providing the authoritative overview of the animal's anatomy, size and geological context.
Open sourceAmerican Museum of Natural History
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Colbert's original 1970 description naming Staurikosaurus pricei, providing the authoritative overview of the animal's anatomy, size and geological context.
Open source