Eoraptor Characteristics

Eoraptor had a thin body that grew to about 1 metre (3 feet) in length, with an estimated weight of about 23 kilograms. Its height was around 30 centimetres at the hips. Eoraptor was a lightly built dinosaur with hollow bones. It had a long head and many small sharp, serrated teeth. Eoraptor possessed a skull which in comparison to the rest of its body was extremely strong and comprised of a set of hollow bones. Its eyes were positioned on the sides of its head and it had a strong long tail which helped the Eoraptor balance as it moved around.

The Eoraptor was a bipedal carnivorous theropod dinosaur who ran upright on its hind legs. Its fore limbs were only half the length of its hind limbs and it had 5 digits on each 'hand'. Three of those digits, the longest of the five, ended in large claws and were presumably used to handle prey. Scientists have surmised that the fourth and fifth digits were too tiny to be of any use in hunting. The hip structure for the Eoraptor was very much like the hip of todays lizards.

Eoraptor probably ate mostly small animals such as small lizards, worms and mammal like creatures. It was a swift sprinter and, upon catching its prey, it would use claws and teeth to tear the prey apart. With a healthy appetite it is likely that the Eoraptor was extremely fierce and aggressive as a species. However, it had both carnivore-type and herbivore-type teeth, so it could possibly have been omnivorous. The Eoraptors were extremely intelligent and many consider them to be miniature versions of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Eoraptors possibly hunted in packs.

Fossils have been found in the Ischigualasto Formation, Valley of the Moon, Ischigualsto-Villa Union Basin, in northwestern Argentina, South America. Several almost complete skeletons have also been found. Its near complete skeleton displayed many characteristics dating it to well before even the Herrerasaurus and putting it only a little time after the recently discovered Prosauropods in Madagascar.

Eoraptor was named by Paul Sereno, Forster, Rogers and Monetta in 1991.