Review by Nicholas Anning (“Brontozaurus”), pictures by Zachary Perry (ZoPteryx)
With the notable exception of Carnotaurus, abelisaurids have not often been made as toys. Lately, though, there has been a move towards renditions of less well-known species, perhaps because toys of the most famous dinosaurs are very common.
Review and photos by Charles Peckham, edited by Suspsy
I’m still rather unclear on how DinoWaurs worked. It was distributed by One2Play, a South African organization that may or may not still exist. I was under the impression that they were simply for collecting before I started researching this review, but there seems to be a game that goes along with it.
Where abelisaurids are concerned the genus Majungasaurus is second in popularity only to Carnotaurus. It has a few things working in its favor. It lived at the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now Madagascar and was the dominant predator of its ecosystem.
Madagascar has always been an island of oddities. From giant lemurs to horned crocodiles, there are a lot of interesting species to see. The Mesozoic likewise has some interesting animals, such as the late Cretaceous Madagascan monster Majungasaurus, an Abelisaurid known for being cannibalistic.
Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous, Madagascar had already been an island for about 20 million years. And just as today, the island would have boasted a unique assortment of organisms isolated from most of the outside world. Thanks to fossils preserved in the Maevarano Formation we know the region was home to Beelzebufo, the world’s largest known frog, the theropod Masiakasaurus with it’s strange, forward projecting teeth, the herbivorous crocodylomorph, Siamosuchus, and the 8-meter sauropod, Rapetosaurus.
From atop a hill, the view of the dry wind-swept plains below is obscured by what at first looks like a dust storm. Soon, it becomes clear that the dust that has engulfed the plain is not from a storm. Here, in what would be known today as Argentina, an epic battle between two of the largest animals that have ever walked the earth is about to reach its conclusion.
