Austroraptor
| Austroraptor | ||||||||||||
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Austroraptor , skeletal reconstruction at the Royal Ontario Museum |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
| 72 to 66 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Austroraptor | ||||||||||||
| Novas et al. , 2008 |
Austroraptor is a genus of theropod dinosaur belonging to the Dromaeosauridae group thatlived in South Americaduring the Late Upper Cretaceous . Novas et al. described Austroraptor 2008 after a fragmentarily preserved skeleton from the Argentine province of Río Negro . This province is known for its numerous fossils of herbivorous dinosaurs. So far only the type A. cabazai has been scientifically described .
The generic name is derived from the Latin austral "southern" and raptor "thief". The type epithet honors Alberto Cabaza , the founder of the Museo Municipal de Lamarque .
features
Fossil preserved are parts of the skull, some neck and vertebrae, ribs, an upper arm bone (humerus) and some bones of the hind legs. The elongated skull was about 80 centimeters long, the forearms were extremely short. The jaw was set with small, conical and unsawed teeth. Austroraptor was unusually large for a dromaeosaur and probably reached a length of five meters. This makes it the largest representative of this group of dinosaurs found in the southern hemisphere.
Systematics
Austroraptor is classified in the Unenlagiinae , a group of particularly bird-like dinosaurs. His closest relatives are Unenlagia and Rahonavis .
supporting documents
- Fernando E. Novas , Diego Pol, Juan I. Canale, Juan D. Porfiri, Jorge O. Calvo : A bizarre Cretaceous theropod dinosaur from Patagonia and the evolution of Gondwanan dromaeosaurids. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society. Series B: Biological Sciences. Vol. 276, No. 1659, 2009, ISSN 0080-4649 , pp. 1101-1107, doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2008.1554 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Philip J. Currie , Ariana Paulina Carabajal: A new specimen of Austroraptor cabazai Novas, Pol, Canale, Porfiri and Calvo, 2008 (Dinosauria, Theropoda, Unenlagiidae) from the latest cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Río Negro, Argentina. In: Ameghiniana. Revista de la Asociación Paleontológica Argentina. Vol. 49, No. 4, 2012, ISSN 0002-7014 , pp. 662-667, online .
