Megaraptor - Facts and Figures

Megaraptor - Facts and Figures Name: Megaraptor (Greek for goliath criminal); articulated MEG-ah-rap-tore Territory: Fields and forests of South America Verifiable Period: Late Cretaceous (90-85 million years prior) Size and Weight: Around 25 feet in length and 1-2 tons Diet: Meat Recognizing Characteristics: Enormous size; bipedal stance; long, single hooks on front hands About Megaraptor Like another astonishingly named monster, Gigantoraptor, Megaraptor has been a piece oversold, in that this huge, rapacious dinosaur wasnt in fact a genuine raptor. At the point when the dispersed fossils of Megaraptor were found in Argentina in the late 1990s, scientistss were dazzled by a solitary, foot-long hook, which they accepted that was situated on this dinosaurs rear feethence its arrangement as a raptor (and one that would have been significantly greater than the greatest raptor yet distinguished, Utahraptor). On closer investigation, however, it worked out that Megaraptor was really a huge theropod firmly identified with Allosaurus and Neovenator, and that those single, larger than average hooks were situated on its hands instead of its feet. Doing what needs to be done, Megaraptor has end up being comparative in appearance to another enormous theropod from Australia, Australovenator, an insight that Australia may have been associated with South America later into the Cret aceous time frame than was recently suspected. Its place in the dinosaur bestiary aside, how was Megaraptor really? All things considered, it wouldnt be astonishing if this South American dinosaur was secured with plumes (in any event during some phase of its life cycle), and it more likely than not stayed alive on the little, skittery ornithopods of its late Cretaceous biological system, or maybe even on infant titanosaurs. Megaraptor may likewise have experienced, or even went after, one of only a handful not many genuine raptors of South America, the fittingly named Austroraptor (which just weighed around 500 pounds, or a fourth of Megaraptors size).