theropod – Page 3 – Nix Illustration

Spectrovenator

(This is a couple of days late for Halloween, but since this October saw the description of a new dinosaur species with a particularly spooky name, I couldn’t resist putting it into the schedule anyway.)

Spectrovenator ragei was an early member of the abelisaurid lineage, living in southeastern Brazil during the Early Cretaceous, about 120 million years ago. It was one of the smallest known abelisaurids, measuring just 2m long (6’6″), and lacked a lot of the skull specializations seen in larger-bodied Late Cretaceous forms like Carnotaurus, suggesting it was more of a generalist predator.

Its genus name translates to “ghost hunter” due to it being found underneath the fossil remains of another dinosaur entirely – a “ghost” unexpectedly appearing when the specimen was being prepared – but it’s extra appropriate since it also helps to fill in a rather sizeable ghost lineage in the fossil record of abelisaurids.

Anzu

Named after the mythological bird-like Anzû – and also nicknamed “the chicken from hell” – Anzu wyliei was one of the larger known oviraptorosaurs, measuring about 3m long (9’10”).

Its fossils are some of the most complete for a North American member of this dinosaur group, with four different specimens representing about 80% of the whole skeleton.

Living right at the end of the Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago in North Dakota and South Dakota, USA, Anzu inhabited the ancient floodplains of Hell Creek and appears to have been a fairly fast-moving omnivorous generalist. It had a large crest on its head made of rather fragile thin-walled bone, which may have been used for display or sound amplification similar to the casque of modern cassowaries.

Some of the fossil specimens also show evidence of healed injuries, including a broken rib and an arthritic toe.

Weird Heads Month #12: Double-Crested Dinosaurs

Dilophosaurus wetherilli is a fairly recognizable dinosaur thanks to its memorable appearance in the Jurassic Park franchise – but unfortunately that also means the popular image of it is completely wrong.

Rather than a small frill-necked venom-spitting creature, this early theropod was actually rather large, reaching around 7m long (~23′), and along with its distinctive double crests it also had a narrow snout with large teeth and a distinctive notch at the front of its lower jaw.

It lived in North America during the early Jurassic, about 196-183 million years ago, and while it wasn’t venomous its notched jaws were probably capable of delivering powerful bites to small struggling prey, much like the similar-looking ornithosuchids in the Triassic. Some structural similarities to the skulls of spinosaurids suggest it may have primarily eaten fish.

Its two bony crests were probably used for visual display, with juveniles only having small crests that fully developed as they matured. They also may have had a more extensive keratinous covering, so it’s not clear what their actual shape and full extent was in life.

Kalligrammatids

Did you know butterflies weren’t the first insects to look like butterflies?

Lepidopterans (the group of insects containing moths and butterflies) have been around since the Late Triassic – but it wasn’t until the diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous that recognizable moths would have evolved, and true butterflies didn’t actually appear until the early Cenozoic.

Before then, back in the mid-Jurassic about 165 million years ago, a completely different group of insects convergently evolved remarkably butterfly-like features such as large colorful scaled wings and long sucking proboscises.

Known as the kalligrammatids, these insects were giant members of the lacewing group, related to modern forms like antlions and owlflies. But unlike their predatory relatives the kalligrammatids were specialized pollinators, possibly having a mutualistic relationship with the flower-like cones of bennettitales or the pollination drops of some types of conifers. They seem to have originated in China and were found across Asia and Europe by the Late Jurassic, but a few fossils from South America suggest they were even more widespread and may just have a poor fossil record.

They reached wingspans of up to 16cm (~6″), comparable to some of the largest modern butterflies, and often sported conspicuous anti-predator markings on their wings such as stripes and eyespots – so it’s not surprising that they’re often nicknamed the “butterflies of the Jurassic”.

Rather ironically, the extinction of the kalligrammatids was probably linked to the rise of the flowering plants that the true butterflies would later be so dependent on. As flowers diversified and plants like the bennettitales declined, the kalligrammatids dwindled and disappeared, with the last known fossil record coming from the mid-Cretaceous of Brazil about 113 million years ago.

But while they were around, I do wonder if they also exhibited some similar behaviors – such as mud-puddling for extra nutrients, and specifically the habit of drinking the tears of larger animals that we see in some species. Perhaps some non-avian dinosaurs like this Dilong occasionally put up with kalligrammatids sitting on their faces!

Vespersaurus

For around 50 years some very unusual dinosaur tracks have been found in ancient desert sediments in South America: strange footprints showing the impression of only a single toe, a walking style never before seen in any reptiles.

And recently a fossil of what might be the track maker has actually been found.

Named Vespersaurus paranaensis, this new species lived during the Late Cretaceous of Brazil (~90 mya) and was a member of the noasaurid family of theropods, closely related to the weird-jawed Masiakasaurus from Madagascar.

Measuring about 1.5m long (~5′), Vespersaurus was fairly lightly built with legs proportioned for running – and its feet were absolutely unique. Although it had the standard three main toes of a theropod, it bore its weight entirely on the middle toe and held the other digits off the ground. The two raised toes on each foot also had large knife-like claws which may have been used during hunting, vaguely similar to the sickle claws on the feet of dromaeosaurs. But unlike dromaeosaurs these claws weren’t highly curved or pointed, suggesting Vespersaurus used more of a scratching and slashing technique rather than the raptors’ puncture-and-restraint strategy.

Much like ancient horses, it may have developed its single-toed stance as an adaptation for more efficient fast running, possibly to avoid larger predators or to chase down small fast-moving prey like hopping desert mammals.

The known one-toed fossil footprints are actually slightly older than the Vespersaurus fossil, and similar tracks in Argentina have been found dating back to the Late Jurassic (~150mya), so there may have been a long lineage of “one-toed” desert-dwelling noasaurids in South America that haven’t been found yet.

Glowing Dinosaurs

Many modern birds are capable of seeing into the ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and some of their non-avian dinosaur ancestors might have had the same sort of vision. And much like their living relatives, that means various parts of their bodies and plumage may also have been UV-reflective and UV-fluorescent.

So here’s a Velociraptor with some speculative UV coloration – although this is just what it would look like to human eyes under a blacklight. What it would actually look like to a creature that can see extra colors is impossible to depict on a screen designed for trichromatic vision!

Island Weirdness #08 – Balaur bondoc

When Balaur was described in 2010 it was initially thought to be a dromaesaurid closely related to Asian forms like Velociraptor. With its particularly stocky legs built for strength rather than speed, two-fingered hands, and two large sickle claws on each foot, it was interpreted as a weird highly specialized predator terrorizing the other Hațeg Island species at the end of the Cretaceous. Although only 1.8m long (5’10”), it was hypothesized to have taken down prey much larger than itself with powerful slashing kicks.

But later analyses cast doubt on this interpretation.

A lot of the anatomical features of Balaur’s skeleton were odd for a dromaeosaurid, but matched those of avialans – a group of close evolutionary “cousins” to the dromaeosaurids, containing Archaeopteryx and the common ancestors of all modern birds. And, by 2015, multiple studies had confirmed Balaur wasn’t really a “raptor” but instead a little further along on the bird lineage.

So now our picture of this dinosaur is very different: a chunky-bodied island bird, grown large and secondarily flightless sort of like a Cretaceous equivalent to the dodo. Its double sickle claws were probably adaptations for climbing and perching in trees, and based on similar avialans it was likely a herbivore rather than a hypercarnivore.

Qianzhousaurus

Qianzhousaurus sinensis, a tyrannosaur from the Late Cretaceous of southern China (~72-66 mya). Measuring about 9m long (29′6″) it had an unusually long and slender snout for a tyrannosaur, leading to its nickname of “Pinocchio rex”.

The only other known long-snouted tyrannosaur was the closely related Alioramus from Mongolia – but since only juveniles of that genus have been found so far, it’s also possible that Qianzhousaurus was actually just a fully-grown species of Alioramus.

Erlikosaurus

Erlikosaurus andrewsi, a therizinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia (~90 mya).

Named after Erlik, the Turko-Mongolian god of death, it’s only known from partial remains – but it was the first therizinosaur ever found with a preserved skull, helping to fill in some of our knowledge of these oddball dinosaurs’ anatomy.

It was closely related to Therizinosaurus, but was only about half the size, estimated to have measured around 4-5m long (13′-16’4″). It would have had a toothless beak at the front of its jaws, an adaption for a herbivorous diet, along with long claws on its hands and a coat of fluffy down-like feathers. I’ve also given it some longer quill-like feathers here, similar to those known in Beipiaosaurus.

Australovenator

Australovenator wintonensis, a megaraptoran dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Queensland, Australia (~100-94 mya). It was a medium-sized member of the group, about 6m long (19′8″), and despite only being known from a partial skeleton it’s still one the best-known megaraptorans – and also the most complete predatory dinosaur from Australia.

Megaraptorans were a group of fairly large theropod dinosaurs, currently known from Australia, South America, and Japan (and maybe Egypt). Their relationships to other theropod groups are rather uncertain, with different studies placing them as neovenatorids, tyrannosaurids, or most recently as an early branch of the coelurosaurs.

They had very lightly-built bodies, with bird-like bones full of weight-reducing air spaces, proportionally small heads with long slender snouts, and leg bones adapted for running. But their most distinctive feature was their hands, featuring massively enlarged claws on the first and second fingers, with the third finger being much smaller and somewhat vestigial-looking. While some other theropods like allosaurids and spinosaurids also had big hand claws, megaraptorans’ almost tyrannosaurid-like mostly-two-fingered arrangement is rather odd.

Their arms and fingers were much more flexible than those of most other non-avian dinosaurs, allowing them to reach out, grab onto prey with those claws, and then pull it in close to their bodies, restraining it in a sort of death-hug while their relatively weak jaws finished it off.

A distinctive injury to the second toe of Australovenator also suggests these dinosaurs may have been able to deliver powerful kicks like modern cassowaries.