Megaraptor: Largest known raptor dinosaur uncovered in South America (2024)

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Megaraptor: Largest known raptor dinosaur uncovered in South America? ›

Megaraptor ( lit. 'large thief') is a genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived in the ages of the Late Cretaceous. Its fossils have been discovered in the Patagonian Portezuelo Formation of Argentina, South America.

What do you get when you combine a mega-blockbuster science fiction movie and the scientific proof to back it up? You find out that reality is more shocking than fiction. Utahraptor is the largest of all raptor dinosaurs.

The titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum is a big deal—literally, the biggest dinosaur that scientists have discovered to date. This long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur lived over 100 million years ago in what is now Patagonia, Argentina.

Megaraptor roamed during Cretaceous period

But the team said they gleaned enough to determine that the megaraptor was a troodontid, a dinosaur family with legs nearly long as long as six feet, far exceeding other known raptor sizes.

"Megaraptor" dinosaur named Fujianipus yingliangi discovered in China. An international research team has unearthed fossil footprints in China that reveal a completely new “megaraptor” species. Named Fujianipus yingliangi, their discovery challenges previous conceptions of raptor size.

Patagotitan mayorum, the Titanosaur

Patagotitan mayorum may have been the world's largest terrestrial animal of all time, based on size estimates made after considering a haul of fossilized bones attributed to the species. The collection included a femur (thighbone) that measured 2.4 meters (8 feet) from end to end.

1. Andean Condor. The Andean Condor, an endangered species, is considered the largest bird of prey with an enormous wingspan measuring 3 meters (9.8 feet) and weighing up to 15 kgs (33.1 lbs.).

Henderson found that Giganotosaurus would have approached 13 m (43 ft) in length and 13.8 t (15.2 short tons) in weight, while Carcharodontosaurus would have approached 13.3 m (44 ft) in length and 15.1 t (16.6 short tons) in weight (surpassing Tyrannosaurus), and estimated the Giganotosaurus holotype skull to have ...

Far bigger than any dinosaur, the blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever lived. An adult blue whale can grow to a massive 30m long and weigh more than 180,000kg - that's about the same as 40 elephants, 30 Tyrannosaurus Rex or 2,670 average-sized men.

These estimates suggested that Patagotitan was 10% larger than Argentinosaurus. In 2019 Gregory S. Paul estimated Patagotitan at 31 m (102 ft) in length and 50–55 tonnes (49–54 long tons; 55–61 short tons) in weight using volumetric models.

Is Megaraptor bigger than Utahraptor? ›

Megaraptor was like a giant Velociraptor, larger even than Utahraptor, that had a killing claw over 14 inches (36 cm) long! Add to that its sharp teeth, long powerful arms and hands with huge claws and you have one fierce animal.

Initially thought to have been a giant dromaeosaur-like coelurosaur, it was classified as a neovenatorid allosauroid in previous phylogenies, but more recent phylogeny and discoveries of related megaraptoran genera has placed it as either a basal tyrannosauroid or a basal coelurosaur with some studies still considering ...

General Information. Megaraptor was a large theropod of the Cretaceous Period, 84 to 65 mya.

A team co-led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researcher Peter Makovicky and Argentinean colleagues Juan Canale and Sebastian Apesteguía has discovered a new huge, meat-eating dinosaur, dubbed Meraxes gigas.

Experts think Velociraptor was probably one of the smarter dinosaurs because it has a large brain in proportion to its body size. And based on the size of the part of the skull that holds the scent-processing part of the brain, experts think Velociraptor had an excellent sense of smell.

The same way bats are mammals, birds are a strange type of dinosaur that got small, evolved wings and developed the ability to fly. Birds evolved from 'raptor' dinosaurs – theVelociraptorfamily.

"Dearc is the biggest pterosaur we know from the Jurassic period, and that tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Cretaceous period, when they were competing with birds—and that's hugely significant," Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University ...

Megaraptor was like a giant Velociraptor, larger even than Utahraptor, that had a killing claw over 14 inches (36 cm) long! Add to that its sharp teeth, long powerful arms and hands with huge claws and you have one fierce animal.

Utahraptor is famous for its raptorial, sickle claw, and may have been the biggest raptor that ever lived. Utahraptor lived well before some of its smaller but more famous raptor cousins like Velociraptor. In this case a larger ancestors came before smaller descendants, the reverse of typical evolutionary trends.

"Velociraptor and Deinonychus are very similar," says Brusatte. "The main difference is size: Velociraptor was the size of a small dog, while Deinonychus was more like a pony. I believe the Jurassic Park Velociraptor was also based in part on Utahraptor, which is even bigger – horse-sized."