DinoBlag: Dryptosaurus

Introducing the brand new segment, DinoBlag which will be replacing the Critter of the segment. The first creature feature (hehe) is the first theropod to be discovered on the North American continent, Dryptosaurus aquilunguis, which was a primitive tyrannosaur.

Dryptosaurus was discovered and named in 1866 by Edward Drinker cope as Laelaps aquilunguis, referring to the Laelaps, a dog of ancient Greek myth. However, it was soon discovered that the name was, as often happens, taken by a genus of mite. It was the first dinosaur to lose its name to a bug, but it certainly was not the last. It was renamed as Dryptosaurus by Othniel C. Marsh in 1877, and the name has, so far, proved valid.

It is thought that Dryptosaurus, one of the dinosaurs endemic to New Jersey, USA, was related to the Early Cretaceous tyrannosaur, Eotyrannus, from England, and it has three fingers on two relatively long front limbs. It is thought that it would have primarily preyed upon the contemporary Hadrosaurus, which was the first dinosaur discovered in the US. Though, due to the rarity of east coast dinosaurs, it is difficult to get a complete picture of Dryptosaurus' diet.

Dryptosaurus was about 20 feet (6.5 meters) long and 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall. It probably weighed a bit over a ton, and was somewhat more gracile than Tyrannosaurus and company. It lived about 70 million years before the present, in the Maastrichtian age of the late Cretaceous.