Sinraptor

Chapter • Meet the dinosaur

Overview

Sinraptor dongi was a large predatory dinosaur roughly 7 to 8.8 metres long, with most published mass estimates falling between about one and two and a half tonnes. It walked on two powerful hind limbs with the backbone held horizontally and a long, stiffened tail acting as a counterweight — the tail never dragged along the ground. The skull was long, narrow and lightly built, pierced by large openings, and lined with recurved, finely serrated blade-like teeth. Low bony crests and rugose ridges ran above the eyes and along the snout, and probably supported horny or brightly coloured skin. The arms were short but muscular and ended in three clawed fingers. No feathers are known from Sinraptor or its close relatives, so most reconstructions show scaly skin, although sparse filament-like covering — especially in juveniles — cannot be ruled out given the feathers found in other theropod lineages.

Chapter • Where it lived

Habitat

Sinraptor dongi comes from the Shishugou Formation of the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang, north-western China, in beds laid down during the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian), roughly 161–156 million years ago. The setting was a humid inland landscape of meandering rivers, floodplains, lakes and forests of conifers, ginkgos and ferns. Sinraptor shared it with sauropods such as Mamenchisaurus and Bellusaurus, small ornithischians, and early tyrannosauroids including Guanlong. The holotype, a nearly complete skeleton with skull (IVPP 10600), was excavated during the Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project expeditions of the late 1980s.

Chapter • Wild behavior

Behavior & Ecology

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Chapter • Scientific place

Taxonomy