Ceratosaurus, the "Horned Lizard,"
was not a creature of size, as shown
by its length of about six meters 
and height of four meters, but it 
compensated its size with ferocity. 
Unlike other theropods, ceratosaurus
possessed an abnormally large skull 
in proportion to its body. Its nasal
horn and brow crests likely 
functioned as mechanisms to attract 
mates, and it probably dueled with 
competiting males over a female. For 
protection, ceratosaurus featured 
small osteoderms that peppered its
back, acting as dermal armor. 
Since its discovery during the Bone 
Wars of Edward Drinker Cope and 
Othniel Charles Marsh, a wide range of 
ceratosaurus growth stages have been
fossilized, cementing it as one of 
the dinosaurs with a more complete
record of its life stages.

Roaming the lands of North America 
and present day Portugal from the
Kimmeridgian to the Tithonian eras
of the Late Jurassic Period,
the ceratosaurus hunted around 
waterways and in underbrush, feeding
on herbivores like dryosaurus and 
possibly on fish. This stands in 
contrast to the hunting patterns of 
larger contemporary carnivores like
torvosaurus, which hunted larger
prey in the same area as 
ceratosaurus, and allosaurus, which 
preferred to hunt large prey in open
floodplains.
