Aucasaurus is an extinct genus abelisaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in Argentina during the Late Cretaceous period.
Dinosaur Planet (2003)[]
Role[]
Aucasaurus are opposing dinosaurs to Saltasaurus in the Dinosaur Planet episode Alpha’s Egg, with one male Aucasaurus named Dragonfly being an archrival to the female Saltasaurus Alpha.
Inaccuracies[]
The Aucasaurus in the Dinosaur Planet episode Alpha’s Egg are depicted as hunting together in packs. While this was considered accurate at the time, it is now thought that Aucasaurus behaved similarly to Komodo dragons, which are the largest living lizards on Earth, as reptiles don’t have the mental capacity to form packs like mammals do. Like Komodo dragons, Aucasaurus garridoi would have been mostly solitary predators of smaller dinosaurs, but occasionally coming together to strike and mob large prey dinosaurs such as sauropods. After the prey was taken down, Aucasaurus garridoi would have aggressively fought each other over the food and killed any others of their own species that tried to feed, similarly to Komodo dragons.
Like all of the Dinosaur Planet dinosaurs, the Aucasaurus in the Alpha’s Egg episode of Dinosaur Planet roar. Non-avian dinosaurs like Aucasaurus didn’t have a syrinx or a larynx, and the professors at the university of Texas in Austin 3D scanned the brain of the Tyrannosaurus rex, and they concluded that large theropod dinosaurs like Aucasaurus were sensitive to low-frequency sounds. Therefore, Aucasaurus would have used closed-mouth vocalization to communicate, making rumbles, coos, swooshes, and booms.
An adult Aucasaurus would not be fully satiated if it only ate a baby dinosaur like the father Aucasaurus was in the Dinosaur Planet episode Alpha’s Egg when he ate a baby Saltasaurus. Also, Aucasaurus hatchlings would be too young to be taught how to hunt prey; they would have been taught as adolescents.
The Dinosaur Planet Aucasaurus have claws, something which abelisaurids didn’t have.