DINOSAUR WEEK III—Top 5 Most Metal Dinosaur Names

Welcome back to Dinosaur Week, where we celebrate all things dinosaur—my most favorite animals in the world!

Dinosaur names are very useful in describing their anatomy, behavior, location, or a person being honored. But once in a while, paleontologists craft a name so ridiculously intimidating and badass that it adds to dinosaurs' already incredible aura. What are my top 5 favorite dinosaur names that sound as metal as hell? I rank them so you don't have to!

Honorable mentions:

Tyrannosaurus Rex, just to get the obvious one out of the way. "Tyrant Lizard King" is so metal that it's kind of unfair for every other dinosaur name in existence.

Carnotaurus, because "Meat-eating Bull" is also punching above its weight class. Leave some for the rest of us!

5. Diabloceratops

You can't accuse this ceratopsian dinosaur with false advertising, because "devil-horned face" is both accurate and awesome. Diabloceratops roamed Utah in the Cretaceous period scaring would-be predators and possibly earning would-be groupies along the way with the very long spikes on their crest that resembles devil horns, hence the name!

4. Dreadnoughtus

When you're one of the largest terrestrial vertebrates known to walk the earth, a name that means "fears nothing" is apt as all hell. Longer than a tennis court and weighing more than 40 tons, Dreadnoughtus probably made everyone else in the Cretacous period feel small. What's crazier is that we only know an immature specimen—meaning Dreadnoughtus could have been even bigger. Much bigger.

3. Thanatotheristes

The name means "death harvester" or "reaper of death," possibly an overcompensation under the shadow of its more popular cousin, the T. Rex. Of course, I'm not saying this to its face, considering I do not want to get reaped to death. Still, apex predators gonna apex predator, and for a meat-eating tyrannosaur from the Late Cretaceous, a calling card of this caliber is enough to give it street cred!

2. Xenovenator

The name literally means “strange hunter,” which already puts it ahead of 90% of dinosaur names in terms of pure death metal energy, but the actual animal makes it even better: this was a bird-like troodontid from Late Cretaceous Mexico with a thick, domed, rugged skull that may have been built for solving social disputes by smashing face-first into other members of its species. If that ain't metal, I don't know what is.

1. Tyrannotitan

I'm sorry, maybe I'm biased as the T. Rex is my favorite dinosaur of all time, but the combination of "tyrant" and "titan" is tickling my monkey brain something fierce. This carcharodontosaurid (shark-toothed lizard) even gives the Tyrannosaurus Rex a run for its money in the size department, putting Tyrannotitan among some of the biggest land predators to ever exist. With a reputation like that, there's no doubt it's the most metal dinosaur name ever!