Dicraeosaurus Facts
- Name: Dicraeosaurus (die-cray-oh-saw-rus), called ‘forked lizard’ because of the forked spines in each of its backbones
- Size: up to 6ft tall and 13–20m long
- Food: plants
- Lived: about 195 – 141 million years ago, inthe Jurassic Period, in East Africa
Dicraeosaurus was a peaceful planteater as big as a medium-sized truck.Deep in the thick forests of treeferns, conifers (trees that have cones) and palms, Dicraeosaurus wandered about eating plants and seeds.
This tall dinosaur had a long thin neck, a thin, whippy tail and long, pencil-like teeth at the front
Small Head
Dicraeosaurus had a small head for its size. Its eyes and nostrils were also small. As a plant-eater, it must use been attacked by
the large meat-eating dinosaurs like the T-rex.
It had no armour or sharp claws to defend itself, but it may have used its tail as a whip lash.
Scientists think Dicraeosaurus may also have been able to move fast enough to run away from its enemies when threatened by them.
Discovering Dicraeosaurus
A huge discovery of dinosaur bones was made in 1907 in Tanzania, East Africa. It seems that many dinosaurs died near the mouth of a river and their bodies
were washed on to mud banks.
Some of the bones that were dug up belonged to dinosaurs that had not been discovered before.
Among them was Dicraeosaurus, although it was not called this until 1935