Majungatholus atopus, or popularly known as Majungasaurus was a meat-eating dinosaur, a therapod. It was up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long and was at the top of the food chain in its locale. It probably ate sauropods, long-necked plant-eaters and other large dinosaurs. The name Majungatholus is derived from “Majunga,” a district of Madagascar and “tholus,” which means dome in Latin. Until this discovery, it had been thought that Majungatholus (then only known from a skull fragment) was a pachycephalosaurid (a thick-skulled, plant-eating dinosaur) very similar to Yaverlandia bitholus, the oldest-known pachycephalosaurid which has been found in Britain. The team in Madagascar was led by paleontologist/anatomist Scott Sampson from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology.
