Episode 268 is all about Dryptosaurus, New Jersey’s smaller cousin of T. rex.

Big thanks to all our patrons! Your support means so much to us and keeps us going! If you’re a dinosaur enthusiast, join our growing community on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino.

You can listen to our free podcast, with all our episodes, on Apple Podcasts at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-know-dino/id960976813?mt=2

In this episode, we discuss:

News:

Two new dinosaurs Isasicursor & Nullotitan were described from Southern Argentina source

Virginia Living Museum is having a dinosaur year, with two exhibits source

Jurassic Dinosaur Park is being built this year in Chongqing China source

A glow-in-the-dark dinosaur show is coming to Michigan on January 25 source

There is a DinoFest in Christchurch, New Zealand from Jan 9-18 source

There are rumors that next season of Power Rangers will have dinosaurs source

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Full Moon has just been released source

The new VR game Dinosaur Island has been released source

The game Dino Crisis is getting updated for PC as Dino Crisis Rebirth source

If the Death Star hit a planet it would have caused a “dinosaur-sized extinction event” source

The dinosaur of the day: Dryptosaurus

Tyrannosauroid that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now New Jersey, US

Large, bipedal carnivore

Estimated to grow up to 25 ft (7.5 m) long

Weighed about 1.7 tons (based on one specimen)

Famous because of Charles Knight painting of Leaping Laelaps (used to be Laelaps)

Charles Knights’ Leaping Laelaps was one of the first (maybe the first) depiction of theropods as active and agile

One of the Bone Wars dinosaurs (episode 250)

May have had an arctometatarsalian foot, like Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, where the third toe is pinched in between the second and fourth toes

Had relatively short arms, and long fingers

But they were long arms, compared to dinosaurs like T. rex

Had large hands with three fingers, though Brusatte and others in 2011 found it may have been similar to derived tyrannosaurids and may have had only two functional fingers

Had 8-inch, talon-like claws

Having the big hands may mean that tyrannosauroids did not uniformly shrink their forelimbs

May be possible tyrannosauroids arms got shorter before their hands got smaller (need more fossils to know)

Had sharp, serrated teeth

May have used arms and jaws when hunting and eating prey

Not clear what it ate (not many Cretaceous dinosaurs from the East Coast of the US known)

May have been hadrosaurids, nodosaurs (but too much armor)

Lived in a coastal environment

During the Late Cretaceous there was a warm inland sea that separated western and eastern North America

Because of the sea, it was isolated from Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops and other dinosaurs of the west, and may have had more generalist features, like earlier dinosaurs

Not many fossils known

Described by Edward Drinker Cope 1866

Laelaps means “hurricane” or “storm wind” and is the name of the dog in Greek mythology that always caught what it hunted (but the name Laelaps had already been used for a mite)

Renamed by Othniel Charles Marsh 1877

Type species is Dryptosaurus aquilunguis

Genus name means “tearing lizard”

Species name refers to its three-fingered hand, and how it has claws like an eagle’s

One of the first theropods known (before Dryptosaurus, only theropod teeth had been found)

Type specimen found in New Jersey, in the West Jersey Marl Company Pit (Hornerstown Formation in Barsboro)

Quarry workers collected the specimen

Type specimen includes a fragmentary maxilla, fragmentary right dentary, vertebrae, parts of the hand, parts of the pubic bones, left femur, left tibia, left fibula, left astragalus

Probably a mature specimen

A few different names and species (most considered dubious)

Cope named Laelaps trihedrodon in 1877 based on a partial dentary that’s now missing, found in Colorado (Morrison Formation). Five partial tooth crowns that were thought to be Laelaps trihedrodon are now thought they could belong to Allosaurus

Cope named Laelaps macropus based on a partial hind limb that Joesph Lediy had throught was Coelosaurus (but had longer toes). In 2017, it was named a new genus, Teihivenator

Considered to be a primitive tyrannosauroid, though it took some time (classified in the past as megalosaurid, coelurosaur, etc.)

Gary Vecchiarelli worked on Project: Dryptosaurus, and he reviewed the history and significance of Dryptosaurus, with the goal to put a full reconstruction Dryptosaurus on display at the New Jersey State Museum, which I think is the skeletal Leaping Laelaps they have had on display since 2016

Paleoartist Tyler Keillor crowdsourced funding and made a life sized replica of Dryptosaurus for the Dunn Museum in Libertyville, Illinois

Fun Fact: Ireland is missing dinosaur fossils because the Mesozoic rock eroded a long time ago, even then, most of the finds are marine.

Sponsors:

Our book 50 Dinosaur Tales is available now! Get the collection of dinosaur stories and facts from recent discoveries by going to bit.ly/iknowdinostore It’s available as an audibook, ebook, and paperback.