Question 1

How do you say Majungasaurus?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus is pronounced mah-JOON-gah-sore-us. Break it into four parts: mah, like the sound you make when a doctor checks your throat, then JOON with emphasis like 'June,' then gah as in 'got,' and finally sore-us like the word 'saurus' in every other dinosaur name. Say it all together fast and you have it. The stress lands hard on that second syllable, JOON.

Question 2

What does Majungasaurus mean?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus means 'Mahajanga lizard.' The first part of the name comes from Mahajanga, a province in northwestern Madagascar where the fossils were first discovered in 1896. Scientists used an older French colonial spelling, Majunga, when writing the name. The second part, saurus, is Ancient Greek for lizard and appears in hundreds of dinosaur names. The species name crenatissimus is Latin for 'most notched,' describing the animal's heavily serrated teeth.

Question 3

How big was Majungasaurus?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus was a medium-to-large theropod, measuring roughly 20 to 23 feet long and weighing between 1,100 and 1,500 pounds. To picture that, it was about as long as a large delivery truck but much lighter. It was noticeably smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex but still one of the largest predators on Madagascar by a significant margin. On an island with no competing large predators, it did not need to be enormous to rule.

Question 4

Was Majungasaurus a cannibal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and the evidence is rock solid. In 2007, scientists published a study in the journal Nature reporting bite marks on Majungasaurus bones that exactly matched the size and spacing of Majungasaurus teeth. No other predator on Madagascar at the time could have made those marks. Whether it was actively hunting its own kind or scavenging already-dead individuals is debated, but the cannibalism itself is considered confirmed by the scientific community.

Question 5

When did Majungasaurus live?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus lived from about 70 to 66 million years ago during the very end of the Late Cretaceous Period. This makes it one of the last non-bird dinosaurs to ever exist before the mass extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It was alive at roughly the same time as Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, which lived on the other side of the world in North America.

Question 6

Where did Majungasaurus live?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus lived exclusively on the island of Madagascar, which was already a separate island during the Late Cretaceous, isolated from Africa and India. Most fossils have been found in the Maevarano Formation in the Mahajanga Province in the northwestern part of the island. The environment there 70 million years ago was hot and seasonally dry, with distinct wet and dry seasons similar to parts of sub-Saharan Africa today.

Question 7

What did Majungasaurus eat?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus was a carnivore that ate other dinosaurs. Fossil evidence shows it preyed on Rapetosaurus, a long-necked sauropod that shared its island home, because scientists have found Rapetosaurus bones with Majungasaurus bite marks on them. It also almost certainly ate smaller animals like reptiles and juvenile dinosaurs. And as the cannibal evidence shows, when food was scarce, it ate other Majungasaurus too.

Question 8

Why did Majungasaurus have such tiny arms?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus had extremely reduced forelimbs, even smaller relative to body size than the already-tiny arms of Tyrannosaurus rex. Scientists believe abelisaurid theropods like Majungasaurus evolved away from using their arms for hunting over millions of years, shifting all the work to their powerful jaws and heavily muscled necks. The arms may have had some minor function in balance or mating displays, but they were essentially non-functional for grasping or attacking prey.

Question 9

What was the horn on Majungasaurus for?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus had a single rounded, bony protrusion on top of its skull between its eyes. Scientists are not entirely certain what it was used for, but the leading ideas include species recognition, where members of the same species could identify each other, and display or combat between rivals, similar to how some modern lizards use head crests. It was not a sharp horn like a rhino's but more of a rough, bumpy dome fused to the skull.

Question 10

How was Majungasaurus discovered?

Accepted Answer

The first Majungasaurus fossil was described by French paleontologist Charles Deperet in 1896 from teeth and fragmentary bones found in Madagascar. For decades the material was incomplete and confusing, including a skull dome mistakenly assigned to a different dinosaur. Major breakthroughs came from expeditions in the 1990s and 2000s led by David Krause of Stony Brook University, which recovered hundreds of bones including multiple skulls and gave scientists a much clearer picture of the animal.

Question 11

Is Majungasaurus related to T. rex?

Accepted Answer

Majungasaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex are both theropod dinosaurs, so they share a distant common ancestor, but they are not closely related. Majungasaurus belonged to a group called Abelisauridae, which evolved on the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana. T. rex belonged to the Tyrannosauridae, which evolved in Laurasia in the north. The two lineages had been evolving separately for tens of millions of years, which is why they look and behave so differently despite both being large two-legged meat-eaters.

Question 12

Did Majungasaurus have feathers?

Accepted Answer

There is no evidence that Majungasaurus had feathers. Fossilized skin impressions from Majungasaurus and its close abelisaurid relatives like Carnotaurus show a pebbly, scaled skin texture with no evidence of feathers or proto-feathers. Abelisaurids appear to have been fully scaly, which makes sense given that they evolved in hot tropical and semi-arid environments where insulating feathers would have been a disadvantage rather than a benefit.

Question 13

How smart was Majungasaurus?

Accepted Answer

Based on brain endocast studies, which use CT scans to map the shape of the brain cavity, Majungasaurus had a brain roughly typical for a large theropod dinosaur. It was not as intelligent as the dromaeosaurids like Velociraptor but was likely comparable to a modern large reptile. Its enlarged olfactory bulbs suggest smell was its sharpest and most relied-upon sense. Scientists believe it was capable of learned behavior and social recognition but was not what you would call a problem-solver.

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