Carnivore Dinosaur Names: Meat-Eating Dinosaurs and How to Say Them

Almost every carnivore dinosaur on this page belonged to a group called theropods — dinosaurs that walked on two legs and were built for hunting. Their arms were often short, but their legs were incredibly powerful and their jaws were lined with serrated teeth designed to tear through flesh and bone.

T. rex had a bite force stronger than any land animal that has ever lived — roughly 12,000 pounds of pressure. That's enough to crush a car. Spinosaurus was even longer than T. rex and used its crocodile-like snout to snatch fish out of rivers. Velociraptor, despite what the movies show, was actually about the size of a turkey — but it had a curved killing claw on each foot that it used like a switchblade.

These meat-eating dinosaurs weren't just scary — they were perfectly engineered predators. Every weird feature had a purpose.

Giganotosaurus is one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs ever discovered. It lived in South America about 98 million years ago and may have actually outweighed T. rex. Scientists think it might have hunted in groups to take down enormous titanosaur sauropods.

Carcharodontosaurus is another monster — its name means "shark-toothed lizard," and those teeth weren't just for show. Found in North Africa, this carnivorous dinosaur had a skull nearly as long as a full-grown human is tall.

On the opposite end of the scale, Microraptor was a carnivore dinosaur the size of a crow — and it had four wings. Yes, four. It could probably glide between trees to ambush prey. Scientists are still arguing about exactly how it flew.

Carnotaurus is the one that looks like a nightmare bull. It had two stubby horns above its eyes, an extremely short snout, and tiny little arms even smaller than T. rex's. Its name means "meat-eating bull" — and that's exactly what it looked like.