In Depth When first described in 1858 by Richard Owen, the type specimen of Valdoraptor was interpreted as a foot belonging to the armoured dinosaur Hylaeosaurus. In 1881, John Hulke scored nearer the mark by identifying the foot as belonging to a theropod dinosaur. From here the foot was attributed to Megalosaurus by Richard Lydekker … Read more
In Depth The one ‘fact’ that is often presented for Alamosaurus is that it is named after the Alamo, the famous mission in San Antonia that was the site for one of the most important battles in the Texas Revolution. However this is completely false and the truth of the matter is that the first … Read more
In Depth Pellegrinisaurus is a genus of titanosaur that lived in South America during the late cretaceous. So far most of the fossils attributed to Pellegrinisaurus are vertebra, however these are mostly from the tail with only a small number of back vertebrae known. This makes an exact size estimate impossible to establish because we … Read more
In Depth The first fossils of Lusotitan were found in 1947, and named in 1957 as a species of Brachiosaurus by Albert-F�lix de Lapparent and Georges Zbyszewski. In 2003 Oct�vio Mateus & Miguel Telles Antunes renamed the fossils as Lusotitan atalaiensis on the basis that the differences were greater than what was to be expected … Read more
In Depth One of the smaller South American titanosaurs, Tapuiasaurus is also one of the few titanosaur genera where skull fossils are also known. Further Reading - A Complete Skull of an Early Cretaceous Sauropod and the Evolution of Advanced Titanosaurians. - PLoS ONE 6 (2): e16663. - Hussam Zaher, Diego Pol, Alberto B. Carvalho, … Read more
In Depth Fossils of Analong were originally assigned to the Chuanjiesaurus genus until they were granted their own distinct genus in 2020. Analong was a mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived in China during the mid Jurassic. Further Reading A revision of the referred specimen of Chuanjiesaurus anaensis Fang et al., 2000: a new early branching … Read more
In Depth Anchisaurus was originally named Megadactylus polyzelus by Edward Hitchcock; however after his death it was realised that that Megadactylus had already been used to name another creature, and so it could not be used. Later in 1885, the famous American palaeontologists Othniel Charles Marsh renamed the fossils Anchisaurus, as well as identifying the … Read more
In Depth Because of the scant material available, Alectrosaurus is not very well known. The only thing that can be said about it with any confidence is that it was a tyrannosauroid, the superfamily that includes the famous Tyrannosaurus rex. Further elaboration on this is not currently possible and the exact position of Alectrosaurus within … Read more
In Depth It’s hard to imagine how a dinosaur can be named from just a single portion of a leg bone, but this is what happened with Ozraptor. Although incomplete, in 2005 the palaeontologist Oliver Rauhut noted that this tibia does have a vertical median ridge on the astragalar groove. Previously Ozraptor was labelled as … Read more
In Depth Brontomerus has been given its name for good reason, it had possibly the largest thigh muscles of all the known sauropods. This has been established from the proportionately large ilium that also projects forward. The ilium is where the thigh muscles attach and this enlargement not only suggests enlarged muscles but a degree … Read more