Family Meal: Cannibal dinosaur known by its bones
By Sid Perkins
Some carnivorous dinosaurs routinely fed on their own species, according to an analysis of scarred fossils. Paleontologists contend the ancient gnaw marks are among the strongest evidence yet that some dinosaurs indeed were cannibals.
Majungatholus atopus was a 9-meter-long theropod that strolled the plains of Madagascar, the large island off southeastern Africa, about 70 million years ago. The dinosaur’s size and its meat-shearing teeth mark the species as a top predator, says Raymond R. Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.