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Life restoration of Allosaurus fragilis.

There have been a number of potential species assigned to Allosaurus, a carnosaurian dinosaur, since its description in 1877 by Othniel Charles Marsh, but only a handful are still regarded as valid. Allosaurus was originally described from material from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the western United States of America; the type species A. fragilis became one of the best-known species of dinosaur. The genus Allosaurus was part of the Marsh/Edward Drinker Cope "Bone Wars" of the late 1800s, and its taxonomy became increasingly confused due to the competition, with several genera and species named by Cope and Marsh now regarded as synonyms of Allosaurus or A. fragilis. Since the description of Allosaurus, scientists have proposed additional species from such far-flung locales as Portugal, Siberia, Switzerland, and Tanzania, Australia and unnamed remains from China have also been assigned to the genus at one time or another. It is unclear how many species of Allosaurus there were. Seven species have been considered potentially valid since 1988. There are also at least ten dubious or undescribed species that have been assigned to Allosaurus over the years, along with the species belonging to genera now sunk into Allosaurus. (Read more...)


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Paul Sereno

Paul Sereno is an American paleontologist who is the discoverer of several new dinosaur species on several continents. He has conducted excavations at sites as varied as Inner Mongolia, Argentina, Morocco and Niger. He is a professor at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic "explorer-in-residence." Sereno's most widely publicized discovery is that of a nearly complete specimen of Sarcosuchus imperator (popularly known as SuperCroc) at Gadoufaoua in the Tenere desert of Niger. Other major discoveries include Eoraptor - the oldest known dinosaur fossil, Jobaria, the first good skull of Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, Afrovenator, Suchomimus and the African pterosaur. (Read more...)

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Life restoration of Tianyuraptor.

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"It is well known, that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it ... But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain that such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings."
—U.S. President Thomas Jefferson describing the bones at Haynes cave. Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), 71, 77.


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Malerisaurus

Malerisaurus is an extinct genus of prolacertiform from the Late Triassic of India belonging to the family Protorosauridae.

Two incomplete Malerisaurus skeletons were discovered in what is thought to be the gastric contents of a Parasuchus hislopi. The fossils were retrieved from fluvial flood plain deposits of the Late Triassic Maleri Formation of the Gondwana supergroup, India. Malerisaurus was a small eosuchian, presumably bipedal, and probably capable of climbing trees and swimming. The skull has some adaptations to a carnivorous diet, but is nevertheless unspecialized and probably more of an insectivore. Malerisaurus, seen as a diapsid skull, shows primitive and advanced facies in its unossified laterosphenoid, absence of antorbital and mandibular fenestrae, gracile form, primitive girdles, elongated cervicals and absence of dermal armour. The suborder Prolacertiformes currently represents four families: Petrolacosauridae, Protorosauridae, Prolacertidae and Tanystropheidae. Provisionally, Malerisaurus is regarded as being phylogenetically close to Protorosaurus.

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