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The ever attendant Rugops has a weak jaw and skull. It was no killer. It was a natural born scavenger, living off the scraps of this highly efficient killer.

– Description in Lost World

Rugops (name meaning "wrinkle face") is a genus of abelisaurid dinosaur that lived during the Middle to Late Cretaceous period in what is now northwest Africa.

Facts[]

Compared to the other theropods in its ecosystem, Rugops was quite a small animal. Paleontologists have recently reduced its size from 6-8 meters, it was actually about 4.4 meters long. Like other abelisaurids, Rugops possessed very short arms and possibly paired dorsal crests, like other abelisaurs. Rugops had an unusually weak skull, suggesting that it may have fed mainly on carcasses and small prey.

In Planet Dinosaur[]

Lost World[]

A Rugops was seen lingering near a Spinosaurus hunting Onchopristis in a river. When the Spinosaurus ate whatever part of the carcass it could and move away to find more Onchopristis, the Rugops moved in and fed on the half-eaten corpse. It did the same repeatedly until the Spinosaurus ate its fill and swam down the river.

Trivia[]

  • Rugops is the first abelisaur to appear in the series.
  • Rugops shares its model with Skorpiovenator.
  • New analysis on the skull suggests Rugops was around 13 feet (4 meters).
  • Rugops possessed a row of seven depressions on the top of its skull. It's been theorized that these depressions either served as anchoring points for a pair of fleshy crests or corresponded to overlying scales.
  • Rugops was depicted as an opportunistic scavenger in Planet Dinosaur, a far cry from the active hunter it was depicted as in the third episode of the 2009 Discovery Channel documentary series, Monsters Resurrected.
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