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Internationally recognized for decades of dinosaur research, Philip Currie will now also be known for his very own prehistoric Alberta predator.

Calgary Herald

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A new species of troodontid theropod (a bird-like dinosaur) has been discovered and named for the famed Canadian paleontologist who once led the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller.

Albertavenator curriei, meaning “Currie’s Alberta hunter,” hunted its prey about 71 million years ago in what is now the Red Deer River valley. The naming recognizes Currie’s decades of groundbreaking work in Alberta. Research on the new species was published Monday in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Researchers initially thought that some bones discovered in the Badlands around the Drumheller museum and stored there ever since belonged to a Troodon, which lived around 76 million years ago. But new comparisons of bones that form the top of the head revealed these came from a species with a distinctively shorter and more robust skull than the Troodon.