Carnotaurus in Media (Part Two)

 

Carnotaurus in Media (Part Two)

 

After it was seen by so many on the big screen in Dinosaur all bets were off: Carnotaurus was a new go-to meat-eater for prehistoric media. Everything from books to games to comics demonstrated Carno inclusion, but I’m going to just stick to movies and TV for this second half. The first role for Carnotaurus in a production from the 21^st century was an animated film based on a video game series I was quite fond of as a kid: Turok. It started in comic book form, launched as a video game series on the Nintendo 64, and then became an adult animated film. Turok: Son of Stone (2008) had a big old Carnotaurus right on the poster, and in the actual movie it’s about the same size as the one from Dinosaur, but quite different in its design. The colours are much darker, and its features are all exaggerated, with bigger horns, longer arms, and more spikes down its body. It’s definitely at least as ferocious as Disney’s Carnotaur, but it isn’t that smart, because it steps out onto a log that can’t bear its weight and gets swept down a river.

The next series of films and shows were all very different from one another. There was the documentary Bizarre Dinosaurs (2009), which featured the Carno for obvious reasons given that title, then the short-lived TV series Terra Nova (2011), followed by the atrocious low budget flick Age of Dinosaurs (2013), which depicted them as more like raptors, and The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave (2016), which, like Age of Dinosaurs, featured what on paper is called a Carnotaurus, but on screen primarily resembles something else. The Land Before Time Carno is basically just a generic T. rex with two pointy horns sticking straight up off its head. The only one of these versions’ worth talking about in much more detail is the Terra Nova Carnotaurus.

Terra Nova came at a weird time when the age of premiere television was just getting started and streaming hadn’t taken over yet. It aired on FOX and was one of many shows from the late 2000s/early 2010s to be cancelled after one season because the budget was too high and viewership was too low. It was the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1999-2002) of its day. I don’t remember the show in too much detail all these years later, but I do remember being increasingly disappointed with each new episode and ultimately not really caring that it had been cancelled, because there were too many boring characters in cliché plotlines and not enough dinosaurs. The Carnotaurus was part of a memorable early episode opener in which it ate a guy, and popped up a few other times throughout the season. The design is pretty good, and for a cable TV series, the CGI isn’t too bad, either.

I guess the dino’s role in The Lost World (novel) is the origin for why so many Jurassic movie fans were eager to see it appear in a film sequel, but it was not included in Spielberg’s The Lost World film, so when Jurassic Park III came along, fans once again had their fingers crossed for a Carno cameo. What we got instead was a brief appearance by a Ceratosaurus, which had a nose horn and some general similarities, but it wasn’t a Carnotaurus. Even the long-in-development reboot Jurassic World didn’t make use of it, but between Dinosaur and its eventual Jurassic film arrival it made little appearances in other Jurassic media, such as video games. Finally, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Carnotaurus made its proper debut, and I have to say, the design is great. We also finally got the Allosaurus in that same movie, and Carnotaurus was done much more justice.

What I find funny about its debut is that after fans had been clamoring to see it for years, they pulled the rug out from under it almost immediately. It runs up to Chris Pratt, about to eat him, then is intercepted and seemingly killed by the T. rex! Rex is still king. This moment was shown in the first trailer, and I was stunned. I hate to admit it now looking back because its my least favourite movie in the whole franchise, but that moment in the trailer really sold me on it as a Jurassic World sequel and raised my hopes far too high. As it turned out, the T. rex only incapacitated the Carnotaurus, then it runs off and the Carnotaurus reappears later after all the dinosaurs are released by the little clone girl on the mainland. The T. rex robs it of a kill yet again but shares the spoils of the human villain’s corpse. 

I couldn’t get into Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020-2022) because it was too much of a YA Jurassic tale for me, but a lot of fans flocked to the show, and over the course of five seasons a Carnotaurus terrorized the campers on multiple occasions—it had a lot more to do than in Fallen Kingdom, and even earned a nickname: Toro (rather appropriate, given the taurus part of its Latin name means the same thing as toro in Spanish). A different Carnotaurus with one broken horn made a cameo in Jurassic World Dominion (2022), and yet another appeared in the Camp Cretaceous sequel series Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (2024-present). This recurrence in newer Jurassic media is no coincidence. The Jurassic World filmmakers have shown they are in tune with the kinds of dinos fans are dying to see, and Carnotaurus is obviously one of them.

The David-Attenborough-narrated Prehistoric Planet (2022) has what I think is the most memorable Carnotaurus appearance since Dinosaur, and likely the most scientifically accurate one so far. Design wise, it’s pretty much perfect. All of the dinosaurs in the Apple TV+ series were carefully created to match up-to-date science, meaning many of them are feathered, do not have their sharp teeth exposed when their mouths are closed, and are not roaring their heads off senselessly. They act and behave like real animals, but some of the behaviours are rather speculative, though still with potential supporting evidence. Case in point: Carnotaurus is shown to rotate its tiny arms in circles (which its socket joints could have allowed for) while trotting around as part of a mating display, with the undersides of its arms coloured bright blue, while the rest of its body is dull browns and grays. The buildup to the dance reveal and the music that plays as the carnivore flaps its tiny limbs is intentionally comedic.

This new Carnotaurus is exactly what I mean when I say people are obsessed with it. To me, the theoretical nature of how it used its arms is acceptable, and the design is cool, but the predator only gets this one short scene and that’s it. The inclusion feels like a nod to dinosaur fans more than anything, and I have seen people online gush about this blue armed dancer. Descriptions such as “a sad-looking dragon” and “cute carno” pop up in comments all the time. I understand the intention of the series was to show dinosaurs in a new light as truly real animals, even more so than Walking with Dinosaurs had attempted two decades earlier, and to intentionally show Carnotaurus, a famously fearsome carnosaur, only doing a little mating dance instead of hunting or fighting, is fine, but why do fans care so much about it?

This isn’t a diss track for Carnotaurus—I think it’s an interesting, unique enough dinosaur that can be pretty scary when depicted a certain way—but I do not grasp why it has risen to such popularity over other classic favourites like Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus. The Allosaurus, for the record, is one of my favourite dinosaurs, and I did a whole exploration of how it has stood in the cinematic shadow of T. rex for over a hundred years (link at the end), and just to compare it to Carnotaurus, there’s no question, in my eyes, as to which one is more formidable, more intimidating, or more interesting. Allosaurus was clearly an active predator that hunted big game, with its strong arms and three-fingered hands that could actually grapple with prey, unlike Carnotaurus’ stubby front limbs. It had a stronger bite, was larger overall, and in a theoretical fight, Allosaurus could take Carnotaurus as easily as Rexy did in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I won’t be surprised at all if another Carnotaurus shows up in Jurassic World: Rebirth. I also won’t be surprised if it returns for a third season of Prehistoric Planet (if that show ever continues) or appears in a new dinosaur movie/show in the near future, but one thing is for sure: the Carno has earned a place in many people’s hearts as a meat-eater to give even T. rex a run for its money as a fan favourite—and after all this, I still don’t really understand why. With numerous portrayals, ranging from nightmare fuel to dopey klutz to flirty arm waver, it seems dinosaur media has been able to show off many sides to The Flesh Bull. Maybe it comes down to the instantly recognizable pair of horns on its head that makes it stick in people’s minds, no matter how its portrayed.

 

Links to more:

 

Carnotaurus in Media Part One:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/05/why-is-everyone-obsessed-with.html

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Review

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2018/06/jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom-review.html

Dinosaur: Favourite Films Series

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/08/dinosaur-2000-favourite-films-series.html

The Complete Cinematic History of Allosaurus (Part One)

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-complete-cinematic-history-of_0552203892.html

Why is Everyone Obsessed with Carnotaurus? (Part One)

 

Why is Everyone Obsessed with Carnotaurus? (Part One)

 

With a new Jurassic World movie on the horizon in this year’s lineup of summer blockbusters, I am again thinking about the franchise, and dinosaur movies in general. I found myself asking a question about a particular species of dinosaur which has led to something more akin to my “Complete Cinematic History of Dinosaurs” series. Carnotaurus is a part of the Jurassic franchise, and has been around for a while now, but seriously…why do people go head over heels for this dino? What is it about Carnotaurus sastrei that has made it into one of the most popular carnivorous dinosaurs in this modern age? The history of this creature may surprise you, and while I could assume most readers will have no idea what a Carnotaurus is or even looks like, with the financial success of the Jurassic World movies over the past decade and the species popping up in so many new pieces of dinosaur media, I don’t think it’s as niche of a dinosaur as it used to be—as in, no longer one only your six-year-old fanatical cousin can name. 

The first time I heard the name Carnotaurus was from the ominous narration by Ben Gazzara for TLC’s docuseries PaleoWorld (1994). In the second episode of the first season, titled “Carnosaurs” on the VHS tape, various large meat-eating dinosaurs are examined, and one of the newer examples is a South American fossil with a distinctly different look from the usual tyrannosaurs that hog the spotlight. Carnotaurus, meaning “flesh bull” or, more precisely, “meat-eating bull”, gets its name from the fact that its narrow jaws are full of serrated teeth designed for devouring other dinosaurs, and the top of its head is crowned with two thick horns. These horns stick out above its eyes, not unlike a bull, but are much shorter, and their purpose is unclear. At the time, the fossil had only been described a decade earlier, and was still not fully understood.

There are three things I remember best about Carnotaurus in this episode. 1) A piece of artwork by Mark Hallett of two allosaurs fighting is used to demonstrate the horns above its eyes—a picture that already doesn’t really depict Allosaurus and the crests on its head accurately, but then it completely misrepresents Carnotaurus, which was an abelisaurid, not an allosaurid. 2) An illustrated forward-facing shot of its head (more accurate than the allosaur moment, but still a bit off) is shown with the animal’s lower jaws splayed wide open (which it could do thanks to a hinge in the bones), and it looks cursed. 3) There’s a brief computer-generated animation of the full-bodied animal walking like a robot in a black void. This last one is probably the most accurate representation from the episode, but a lot of interesting interpretations of the creature were to come in many forms beyond this point.

Before we continue looking at Carnotaurus representation in media, let me give you a clearer idea of the real animal, because paleontologists now have a pretty good idea of what Carnotaurus is and how it lived 75 million years ago. You know how T. rex has famously small arms compared to the rest of its body? Carnotaurus makes Rexy and her ancestors look like orangutans by comparison! Okay, that was an extreme exaggeration, but a) I couldn’t help it, and b) the fact is, Carnotaurus had such tiny arms that they probably couldn’t do much with them at all. Reaching an adult size of twenty-five feet in length, it was also much smaller than many of the other carnosaurs of the Cretaceous, such as Giganotosaurus (which was also from South America). Skin impressions show it definitely had bumpy hide, but even to this day, no one is quite sure whether it was an active hunter of large prey or ate smaller creatures because of its relatively weak jaws, and the exact function of those horns remains a mystery, as well.

After its PaleoWorld introduction, Carnotaurus popped up not on television or in movie theatres next, but on bookshelves. Michael Crichton, ever at the cutting edge of scientific research, wanted some new species to populate his sequel to his novel Jurassic Park, and knowing director Steven Spielberg wanted to adapt The Lost World (1995) as he had done with the first book, maybe he felt pressured to deliver something that could top the venom-spitting Dilophosaurus and deadly intelligent Velociraptor. A pair of Carnotauruses antagonize the heroes of the story, with the ability to change their skin colour like chameleons. This made them decidedly more lizard-like than bird-like (as several species were depicted in both books), but they are described as being quite a bit smaller than their real full-grown size, only standing about seven feet high. This entirely speculative trait would later be given to the hybrid monstrosity in Jurassic World: the Indominous Rex.

The meat-eating bull made a brief appearance in the documentary miniseries When Dinosaurs Ruled (1999), a successor to PaleoWorld, but its next appearance was its biggest, and remains so to this day, in Disney’s CGI extravaganza Dinosaur (2000). T. rex was swapped out in favour of a large predator that was new, looked different, and would terrify children. This Carnotaurus, or “Carnotaur” (sans “us”) as it’s called by the herbivorous protagonists, does not look or act like the real animal. T. rex was part of the original plan, but at the last minute they switched it to Carnotaurus, probably because those brow horns and osteoderms (thick scales covering its body) made it look even more vicious, so what they ended up with was a very tyrannosaur-like Carnotaur, with a heavy, robust body and a massive skull.

The way the Carnotaur makes its entrance is something I will never forget. A baby Parasaurolophus chasing a dragonfly happens across the lurking predator in the trees, realizes the danger, and runs away in panic, alerting a huge herd of dinosaurs to the impending threat. We hear the heavy footsteps, see a glimpse through the foliage, and then BOOM, the beast explodes out of the forest roaring and running at full force. The first time I saw it happen on the big screen it terrified me, and I would rewind my VHS tape and replay this opening scene over and over with the volume turned all the way up. Even though Dinosaur regresses to more typical family fare when the herbivores start speaking and the story becomes about another herd trying to reach the nesting grounds, this opening is as ferocious and cinematic as any dinosaur film has ever managed to be.

This particular Carnotaurus comes in a pair at the movie's midpoint, with one being quite a bit larger than the other (presumably a male/female couple), and though the design is inaccurate, the red colour scheme, along with additional spikes and bumps all over its back, and that tail ending in what looks like a chainsaw (probably meant to evoke the real spiny tailed lizard) plays right into its devilish appearance. Though both Carnotaurs end up dead by the end, with one buried in a cave-in and the other toppling off a cliff, they managed to make a few memorable kills and haunted the nightmares of most 2000s kids for years to come. The fascination didn’t necessarily begin with Dinosaur, but I think it’s where the greatest exposure to mainstream audiences first occurred, and from that point on, Carnotaurus became ubiquitous. Next time, I’ll run through more appearances and try to figure out why the world has grown to love Carnotaurus so much. 

 

Part Two:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/06/carnotaurus-in-media-part-two.html