Skip to main content

Sinraptor dongi

Second drawing of the day...though the date has changed already. This is Sinraptor dongi an allosauroid from the Jurassic of Xinjiang, China. There are two recognised species of Sinraptor, S. dongi and S. hepingensis. S. hepingensis was initially described as the third species of Yangchuanosaurus after Y. shangyouensis and Y. magnus (Gao 1992 Vertebrata PalAsiatica 30: 313-324) but was subsequently assigned to the genus Sinraptor (Currie and Zhao 1993 Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30: 2037-2081). Compared to Yangchuanosaurus, Sinraptor has a relatively longer and lower skull. The two genera are united as Sinraptoridae. One of the distinchuishing features of sinraptorids is the high number (more than two) of accessory openings in the antorbital fossa. Another interesting feature of Sinraptor is the tall plate-like neural spines of the dorsal vertebrae. This is quite similar to Metriacanthosaurus such that Paul (1988 Predatory Dinosaurs of the World) synonymised Yangchuanosaurus with Metriacanthosaurus - he used M. shangyouensis instead of Y. shangyouensis.

I had two opportunities of studying the specimen of S. dongi at the IVPP. S. dongi is stored in an offsite warehouse about an hour's drive out from the IVPP. It is really a warehouse and mounted specimens of Sinraptor, Monolophosaurus, and a prosauropod (I forgot what it was) are just standing there amongst wooden crates and discarded packing materials, literally collecting dust. And it was damn cold...

Comments

Zach said…
I always wondered if the Sinraptoridae included more than just Sinraptor. Thanks for clearing that up, Manabu!
14 April, 2008 20:00
Raptor's Nest (old) said…
No problem...Sinraptorids are one of my favourite groups of theropods. Personally I think their skulls look cool!
15 April, 2008 00:32
Zach said…
Yeah, they're like...streamlined allosaurs.
15 April, 2008 01:40
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The difference between Lion and Tiger skulls

A quick divergence from my usual dinosaurs, and I shall talk about big cats today. This is because to my greatest delight, I had discovered today a wonderful book. It is called The Felidæ of Rancho La Brea (Merriam and Stock 1932, Carnegie Institution of Washington publication, no. 422). As the title suggests it goes into details of felids from the Rancho La Brea, in particular Smilodon californicus (probably synonymous with S. fatalis ), but also the American Cave Lion, Panthera atrox . The book is full of detailed descriptions, numerous measurements and beautiful figures. However, what really got me excited was, in their description and comparative anatomy of P. atrox , Merriam and Stock (1932) provide identification criteria for the Lion and Tiger, a translation of the one devised by the French palaeontologist Marcelin Boule in 1906. I have forever been looking for a set of rules for identifying lions and tigers and ultimately had to come up with a set of my own with a lot of help...
6 comments
Read more

Spinosaurus, the gigantic pangolin of the Cretaceous?

I was made aware of this not long ago - it kind of looks creepy, but it gave me an idea: Did Spinosaurus walk like a pangolin? That is, with it's hands low to the ground but not touching the ground - so no knuckle walking - and maintaining balance as a biped... This pangolin seems to maintain balance on its hind legs even though, on cursory glance, its centre of mass seems too far forward for that. Spinosaurus is supposed to have had a dense femur, so maybe its centre of gravity was farther back than you'd think from overall proportions. Maybe the sail helped tip the scale back? ...or maybe it was a giant ant-eater? Those giant claws look particularly suited to breaking open termite mounds? Who knows. This is me being silly, but thought it was hilarious enough to share...
2 comments
Read more

Top 10 scientifically important theropod dinosaurs of all time (off the top of my head)

I thought I'd do a fun post for once. And since list based articles are the norm for fun on the internet, I thought I'd do one on dinosaurs, but given that I know most about theropods, I've decided to restrict my list to theropods (...maybe in a future post, I'll do other clades). My ranking is based mostly on scientific importance so it may not reflect awesomeness, and it is obviously subjective as to how I rank importance to science. For instance, interesting discoveries or unique palaeobiology are ranked relatively low compared to wealth of information and data or completely revolutionising our understanding of the evolution of theropods. So here are my top 10 scientifically important theropod dinosaurs of all time (off the top of my head) 10. Megalosaurus Being the first dinosaur to be named, Megalosaurus automatically deserves a spot on this list, but given the fragmentary nature of known fossil specimens, and being mostly useless as a meaningful source ...
1 comment
Read more