Carnotaurus, also known as Carnotaurs ("Meat-eating bull"), were a species of carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous period 72-69.9 million years ago in South America. They appear as the main antagonists of Disney's 2000 CGI film Dinosaur.
Background
Personality
Although they are antagonistic, they are not evil, they are just carnivorous predators who need food and water to survive. This is the main reason for the confrontation in the film; they have no real malicious intent. They just care about feeding themselves and only show respect for themselves and no one else. However, they are somewhat smart and cunning, as they follow the herd's footprints to find food and water, then later allow an injured Bruton to escape so he could lead them to the rest of the herd. The two in the movie might be a mated pair, relatives or perhaps the larger carnotaur was the parent of the smaller one, but they have a very strong bond and the surviving one shows a powerful grudge against Aladar, trying to drag him over a cliff even when it was obvious the Carnotaur would die, after the other one was crushed by rocks Aladar's friends caused to fall on it.
Even so, they are extremely vicious, dangerous, bloodthirsty, and feared, described as a "mouthful of teeth with a bad attitude" by Eema.
Physical appearance
The Carnotaurs are vicious-looking, meat-eating dinosaurs with red scales, large tails, sharp teeth, and short horns. The two Carnotaurs that serve as the film's main antagonists are noticeably different in size, though it is unknown whether they are a mated pair or just relatives.
Appearances
Dinosaur
A Carnotaurus first appears at the beginning of the film where a young Parasaurolophus chases a flying lizard into the jungle. The flying lizard eventually landed on what appeared to be the bark of a large tree. The young dinosaur looks up to where the reptile is, but before it can get close, saliva falls on the branch next to it, causing the young dinosaur to look up where the lizard landed: the nose of a carnotaur, which quickly awakens. The young Parasaurolophus runs out of the jungle in terror, getting the attention of many of the herbivorous dinosaurs. The carnotaur bursts out of the treeline immediately after and starts chasing the dinosaurs, smashing all but one of the eggs in an Iguanodon's nest in the process. Ultimately, the chase ends when the carnotaur runs down and kills a Pachyrhinosaurus, because the herbivorous dinosaur is unable to run too fast.
At the middle of the film, two Carnotaurus scare off a pack of Velociraptors from the remains of a Struthiomimus. The pair then go after the herd in which Aladar, his lemur family and dinosaur friends are in by following the tracks left behind.
Later, Bruton and a scout are attacked by the Carnotaurus while searching for water. Bruton escapes to warn Kron, albeit injured, as the scout is killed by them. As soon as Bruton tells Kron, he is left behind to fend for himself, having unintentionally led the predators to the rest of the herd. That night, the carnotaurs stop for water before noticing new tracks in the distance and resuming their hunt.
Later, as Aladar, his family, friends and Bruton take shelter from a rainstorm in a cave, the Carnotaurs inevitably discover them and attack. Bruton comes to the rescue and sacrifices himself by causing a cave-in, burying the smaller Carnotaur. The larger carnotaur survives, however, leaving and roaring in vengeance, before continuing his search for the herd.
After Aladar and company find the Nesting Grounds, Aladar rushes back to warn Kron's herd about the rock pile and ravine blocking the main entrance. On the way there, he sees a dead Stygimoloch and quickly hides when he hears the carnotaur coming to eat the Stygimoloch. Aladar manages to escape shortly after, unintentionally drawing the carnotaur's attention.
Carnotaur preparing to scare the herd
The next day, Aladar reaches the herd and tries to warn Kron about the approaching carnotaur. Kron refuses to listen, however, as he thinks Aladar is leading the carnivore right to the herd. After his battle with Kron, Aladar assumes the herd's leadership. Unfortunately, the carnotaur arrives shortly after and the herd panics. Aladar orders the herd to stand together to avoid being picked off. The plan works and the carnotaur backs down. Suddenly, it spots Kron and runs after him, with Neera and Aladar not far behind. After Kron climbs the rocks only to find himself facing a cliff, the carnotaur corners him. Kron fights back, but the Carnotaur bites him in the back and tosses him against a rock. As he is about to finish him off, Neera comes and assaults the Carnotaur in an attempt to save her brother, but is easily overpowered. The carnotaur then prepares to finish Neera, but Aladar arrives, and manages to push the carnotaur to the edge of the cliff. As the carnotaur faces Aladar, its heavy weight causes the cliff ledge to crumble. As the cliff starts to crack, the carnotaur grabs Aladar and tries to pull him down along with it, but fails, and the Carnotaur falls off the cliff to its death in the jagged rocks below.
DINOSAUR
Carnotaurus animatronic
In the ride DINOSAUR at Disney's Animal Kingdom, a Carnotaurus is encountered four times. The first time is when the Time Rover's computer locks onto a large dinosaur, although he's not the Iguanodon, the dinosaur meant to be captured. When the Time Rover reached the targeted dinosaur, the computer identified it as a Carnotaurus. He roars at the riders, but they safely get away.
In the second encounter, lightning flashes to reveal the Carnotaurus. As he runs towards the guests, the Time Rover flees. After turning left and right many times to avoid meteor strikes, the Carnotaurus is encountered again, rearing to its full height and roaring loudly. Luckily, the riders in the Time Rover escape.
The last encounter is just seconds before the killer asteroid hits the Earth. The Carnotaurus lunges at the guests just as they make it through to the present day as the asteroid marks the extinction of the dinosaurs, including the Carnotaurus.
Additionally, the queue line for the attraction features a Carnotaurus skeleton in its queue, explaining its beefed up size and misplaced location through a museum sign labeling it as a Floridian subspecies.
Gallery
Trivia
- In Dinosaur, Carnotaurus was shown to be much bigger than it was in real life. The film shows it to be as big as the Tyrannosaurus Rex by naming it Carnotaur. In actuality, Carnotaurus sastrei was smaller; roughly about 9 feet tall and 26 feet long (while Tyrannosaurus was 15-20 feet tall and 40 to 45 feet in length), thus making Carnotaurus smaller than Iguanodon, the main dinosaur of the movie. The real life animal was also far skinnier than the movie counterpart, having disproportionately long legs meant for high speed running as opposed to close quarters brawling the film version uses.
- According to the behind-the-scenes features on the DVD, the Carnotaurus is at least 15 feet tall in the movie.
- The skeleton of Carnotaurus "robustus floridaensis" in the lobby for the ride at Animal Kingdom is a casting made by combining elements of cast material from a Tyrannosaurus rex and scaled up casts of actual Carnotaurus sastrei material.
- During the production of both the movie and the ride, original plans called for the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, but Disney decided to incorporate the lesser popular Carnotaurus instead, as its demonic appearance made it fitting for the role of the main antagonist and it wasn't a well known animal at the time.
- Another inaccuracy is that while the Carnotaurs in the movie are very big, bulky animals, the real life Carnotaurus was a very slim animal, almost like a cheetah with long, gracile legs.
- Added to this, Carnotaurus was also very fast and had a thick, stiff tail for powering its running abilities. As such it could not use its tail to strike another dinosaur, as the larger Carnotaurus did to Aladar in the film during their battle.
- The canyon scenes were possibly set in the Americas because Carnotaurus and several iguanodonts (not Iguanodon) were discovered in Argentina. The death spots of the two abelisaurids were in South America and the rest of the film most likely takes place in North America (the nesting grounds), Asia (the desert), and Europe (the original nesting ground/land).
- Many fans and viewers often mistake the Carnotaurus portrayed in the film as T. rex due to their large size. They even nearly resemble a devil-like T. rex in appearance. Carnotaurus do have many differences from T. rex, such as smaller, useless arms, its obvious horns, and shorter snout.
- The vocal effects for the Carnotaurus were based on the roars of big cats.
- The second, smaller Carnotaurus is perhaps the larger one's sibling, twin, or mate. It is also possible given their size differences, that the larger carnotaur is the smaller one's parent.
- Aside from size, the Carnotaurus' appearance is highly accurate in most regards; as skin impressions are known from Carnotaurus, its appearance can be shown with relative confidence.
- Carnotaurus and all other abelisaurs are related to Ceratosaurus, which is a distant relative that shares a common ancestor with them.
- Deleted scenes depicting Bruton and his scouts' attack by the carnotaurs indicate that there was originally supposed to be three carnotaurs instead of two.
- Original storyboards also indicate that the carnotaurs were responsible for the deaths of the discarded characters that were Noah's (an old name concept for Aladar) grandparents. The creatures also were originally given a much more eldritch role as almost a dinosaur Grimm Reaper, some notes saying they'd almost never vocalize and have a habit of sneaking up on characters.
- Carnotaurus has also appeared in the 2016 animated Universal movie, The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Heart, as well as the 2018 live-action Universal movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page Carnotaurus. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. Text from Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. |
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