Raptorex
| Raptorex | ||||||||||||
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Artistic reconstruction of life by Raptorex |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous ( Barremium to Early Aptian ) | ||||||||||||
| 130.7 to 123 million years | ||||||||||||
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Yixian Formation , Lujiatun , ( China ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Raptorex | ||||||||||||
| Sereno et al., 2009 | ||||||||||||
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Raptorex (from Latin raptor = robber and rex = king, thus "robber king") was a genus of dinosaurs from the superfamily of the Tyrannosauroidea within the theropods . At the time of the Lower Cretaceous he lived in what is now the People's Republic of China .
description
The only known species (type species) is Raptorex kriegsteini . The only find of this kind is the holotype LH PV 18, a skeleton that was discovered in northeast China, bought from Peter Kriegstein and finally used by Sereno et al. was first scientifically described. The specimen was about 3 m long, weighed about 65 kg and probably died at the age of 5 to 6.
The Raptorex fossils discovered in 2009 are special because it was previously assumed that the small, basal tyrannosauroids had a small head and long arms with three-fingered hands, and that there were features such as the large, very powerful head and the tiny, two-fingered ones Arms would only have developed with the enlargement of the body. Raptorex , however, was a small tyrannosaur, and yet it had these characteristics - unlike, for example, Guanlong , an even earlier tyrannosaur. Apparently the small arms and the large head developed first in the basal Tyrannosauroidea, and only then did they become those huge predators, such as Tyrannosaurus or Albertosaurus .
designation
The name Raptorex is derived from the Latin words raptor ( robber ) and rex ( king ), which means "robber king" or "king of the robbers". Raptorex was first used by Sereno et al. scientifically described. The type - and only species - R. kriegsteini is named after Henry Kriegstein , who made scientists aware of the fossil after he had bought it in China .
Systematics
Raptorex belonged within the Lizard Basin Dinosaurs (Saurischia) to the Theropods (Theropoda) and within these to the Tyrannosauroidea . The only species is Raptorex kriegsteini . A cladogram according to Brusatte et al. (2010):
| Tyrannosauroidea |
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- Tiny T. rex fossil discovery startles scientists , cnn.com (English)
- Reanalysis of “Raptorex kriegsteini” , PLoS ONE (English)
- ↑ Stephen L. Brusatte, Mark A. Norell , Thomas D. Carr, Gregory M. Erickson, John R. Hutchinson, Amy M. Balanoff, Gabe S. Bever, Jonah N. Choiniere, Peter J. Makovicky , Xing Xu : Tyrannosaur paleobiology: new research on ancient exemplar organisms. In: Science . Vol. 329, No. 5998, 2010, pp. 1481–1485, doi : 10.1126 / science.1193304 , bibcode : 2010Sci ... 329.1481B , PMID 20847260 .