How to Use theropod in a Sentence
theropod
noun-
And in theropods such as T. rex, the vessel-packed structures would have covered a large area on top of the head.
—John Pickrell, National Geographic, 4 Sep. 2019
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In 1909, the first tracks were discovered in the area, belonging to a three-toed theropod.
—Dallas News, 24 Aug. 2022
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The site has three main track types — the big meat-eating theropods that made the Eubrontes tracks, and two smaller plant eaters that left three- and four-toed tracks.
—David Lyon, BostonGlobe.com, 18 June 2019
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The Podokesaurus, about 1 foot tall and 3 feet long, is what’s known as a theropod — a type of dinosaur that walked on its hind legs with trios of claws.
—Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Oct. 2022
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Sauropod and theropod tracks from 113 million years ago are preserved along the bed of the Paluxy River, which runs through the park.
—Dale Blasingame, San Antonio Express-News, 11 June 2018
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What D’Emic and his colleagues found in theropods might eventually turn out to be more the rule than the exception.
—Anna Gibbs, Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2023
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Tyrannosaurs belonged to a greater group of theropod dinosaurs called coelurosaurs.
—Brian Switek, Scientific American Blog Network, 14 June 2017
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The extinct theropods lived 75 million years ago and likely only laid four to six eggs per cycle.
—Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 3 Apr. 2023
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Left: Researchers at a camp near the Beardmore Glacier, where fossils from meat-eating theropods and plant-eating sauropods were found.
—Discover Magazine, 24 Jan. 2018
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The large theropod roamed what is now known as the northern part of Africa during the Cretaceous period.
—Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 27 Feb. 2024
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Such a find could offer better physical evidence as to what the mouths of theropods looked like.
—Alex Chun, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Mar. 2023
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Even the advanced meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods weren’t immune.
—Traci Watson, USA TODAY, 4 July 2017
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Researchers believe that these tracks were left by theropods, a diverse group of bipedal dinosaurs that includes the Tyrannosaurus rex.
—Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 3 Apr. 2018
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The findings could shed new light on the evolution of birds, which arose from a group of carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called theropods.
—Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Dec. 2023
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The dinosaur that made them was a theropod, probably Coelophysis (see-low-FY-sis), a meat-eater that stood about 7 feet tall.
—David Lyon, BostonGlobe.com, 18 June 2019
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The dinosaur tracks belong to theropods, sauropods, and iguanodontians, and are spread across three rock outcroppings in the Brazilian state of Paraíba.
—Isaac Schultz / Gizmodo, Quartz, 28 Mar. 2024
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The theropods roaming around on what is now Skye may have been a very early cousin of the T. rex, which lived during Cretaceous period.
—Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 3 Apr. 2018
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There are also tracks of four theropods — relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex that lived tens of millions of years later, but these were smaller, roughly the size of a large raven.
—Kenneth Chang, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2018
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The footprints, found in a lagoon in Brother's Point, are believed to have been made by two dinosaurs -- a hefty long-necked sauropod and a sharp-toothed theropod, a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
—Zahid Mahmood, CNN, 3 Apr. 2018
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The preferred strategy didn’t limit how much bigger the theropods became.
—Anna Gibbs, Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2023
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In 2017, Carr and his colleagues published a paper suggesting that theropods like the T. rex had face bones with the texture of wrinkled leather, like crocodiles do.
—Alex Chun, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Mar. 2023
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That dinosaur, most likely a fleet-footed, meat-eating theropod, had lived near a stream in a forest of towering conifers.
—Michelle Innis, New York Times, 5 July 2016
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All three theropods had beaks but with vestigial, or functionless, tooth sockets.
—Nicholas St. Fleur, New York Times, 26 Sep. 2017
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Only two such tracks from a theropod have been recorded by Fiorillo’s team here.
—Emily Schwing, Anchorage Daily News, 4 Oct. 2022
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Vespersaurus paranaensis is a member of the Noasaurinae group of theropod dinosaurs.
—Jill Langlois, National Geographic, 2 July 2019
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Mei is a small theropod dinosaur from Liaoning Province, found in a sleeping or resting posture.
—Ginny Mohler, Smithsonian, 18 Apr. 2018
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And in 1996, scientists in China unearthed Sinosauropteryx, the first feathered theropod that isn't a direct relative of birds.
—National Geographic, 5 Apr. 2016
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In 1978 — well into a dinosaur renaissance that began about a decade earlier — fossils from a theropod that would come to be known as the Neovenator fell from the cliffs on the south of the island.
—Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 14 July 2023
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For a while, paleontologists thought that an assortment of anomalies in the spinosaur body and brain allowed these theropods to sustain themselves along the shores.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 14 Feb. 2023
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There are four pairs of theropod dinosaur tracks, which may have been left while the crow-sized carnivores were making a coordinated hunting sweep through the area.
—Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 3 Feb. 2018
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'theropod.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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