Knopfler's Vicious-Lizard

Masiakasaurus knopfleri

(Sampson, Carrano & Forster, 2001)

Madagascar, in the final years of the Cretaceous, is an island populated by a mix of creatures vastly different from familiar species like Tyrannosaurus rex  and Triceratops horridus, which roam the northern continents.  Here, on a fragment of the once vast southern continent of Gondwana, a different group of creatures roam.  On Madagascar, sauropods, scaly abelisaruoids, and feathers urvogels still survive, but their isolation has produced some truly bizarre forms. 

One of these strange creatures is Masiakasarus knopfleri, a noasaurid abelisaur, part of a group of small, scaly predators of the Southern Hemisphere like Noasaurus leali.  While most of these poorly-known predators seem to be rather generalized hunters of small game, however, M. knopfleri is rather more specialized.  Its mouth bristling with conical, needle-sharp teeth, M. knopfleri is a fish-eater. Wading through the lakes and streams of Madagascar like some nightmare heron, M. knoprleri will periodically darts its wedge-shaped head downward, closing its jaws over its flashing prey.  The unlucky fish, impaled upon a net of teeth, cannot wriggle from the predator's grasp, and lies trapped until M. knopfleri devours its catch at leisure.

 

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© Daniel Bensen 2004
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