Tuesday 21 January 2014

Dinosaur of the day




This is my life restoration of one of the recently discovered theropods, or better say recently described ones: Lythronax argestes Loewen et al., 2013. Lythronax argestes, translates roughly as Southwestern king of gore and this dinosaur inhabited  the ancient island continent of Laramidia (now southern Utah of the US) around 80 million years ago (the Late Cretaceous period). At the time a rising inland sea divided the North American continent. It is estimated that this toothy and agile  great...great grandfather of the notorious T.rex grew up to an estimated 8 m (26.2 ft) in length and weighed 2.5 tonnes (5,500 lb). In short: you wouldn't want to met him in the open.
The detailed description of the fossil and it's environment can be found in the paper, and the Wikipedia, of course.
The paper in PDF is free for download:
 Loewen, M. A.; Irmis, R. B.; Sertich, J. J. W.; Currie, P. J.; Sampson, S. D. (2013). "Tyrant Dinosaur Evolution Tracks the Rise and Fall of Late Cretaceous Oceans". In Evans, David C. PLoS ONE 8 (11): e79420.

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