Dino of the Week: Dracovenator

Dracovenator ambushing a flock of early ornithischians

Type Species: Dracovenator regenti

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Theropoda - Dilophosauridae 

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Carnivore

Dracovenator was a medium-sized carnivorous Early Jurassic theropod that lived around 201 to 199 million years ago in South Africa. It’s based solely upon partial skull fragments, so there’s much speculation about its length and weight (though scientists estimate that it grew between eighteen and twenty-one feet in length and weighed around 882 pounds). Its remains were discovered in the Upper Elliot Formation in South Africa, and it lived alongside numerous crocodylomorphs, many early ornithischians – such as Abrictosaurus, Heterodontosaurus, and Lesothosaurus – and among the prosauropods such as Massospondylus and Plateosaurus. Paleontologists speculate that Dracovenator preyed upon prosauropods but may also have attempted to ambush the fast-running ornithischians of the day. 

Dracovenator is considered a dilophosaurid theropod because of skull similarities with the much later Dilophosaurus. The back end of its lower jaw features a series of lumps and bumps similar to those seen with Dilophosaurus. The presence of a crest on Dracovenator’s skull is largely conjectural, based mostly upon the fact that Dilophosaurus had such a crest.