Saturday, May 2, 2009

Critter of the Day, 5/2/09: Acrocanthosaurus


Today's daily critter: the mighty Acrocanthosaurus atokensis! This 40-foot carnivorous carnosaur (check up on the new definition - any dinosaur more closely related to Allosaurus than birds. It no longer means just any large carnivore) sported what is presumed by most to be a flashy sail (some guys think it supported a bison-like hump. Crazy bovinophiles). No one can seem to agree on whether this carnosaur was a very late Allosaurid or a northern Carcharodontosaurid (huge, southern theropods and voracious hunters of sauropods, or so our current understanding is), but the fact remains that it was quite a dangerous-looking beastie. The original specimen was found in Atoka County, Oklahoma, from which its species name was derived, and was then named in 1950 by J. Willis Stovall and Wann Langston, Jr. Due to its large dorsal spine, it was classified for some time with the spinosaurids. Additionally, the above picture (I think it's by Dmitry Bogdanov, but Wikipedia may have lied to me) is supremely kickass.

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