Aorun
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Aorun Temporal range: Late Jurassic 161.5 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Clade: | Tyrannoraptora |
| Genus: |
†Aorun Choiniere et al., 2013 |
| Type species | |
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†Aorun zhaoi Choiniere et al. 2013 |
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Aorun (pron.:"AW-roon") is an extinct genus of carnivorous theropod dinosaur first discovered in 2006, and a scientific description was published in 2013. It is one of the oldest known coelurosaurian dinosaurs and is estimated to have lived ~161.5 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period. It is the fifth theropod discovered from Wucaiwan.
The fossil which included the skull with numerous teeth, some vertebrae and leg bones were discovered by James Clark, the Ronald B. Weintraub Professor of Biology, in the Department of Biological Sciences of GW's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences with his then doctoral student Jonah Choiniere, along with a team of international researchers in a remote region of Xinjiang in China in 2006. They originally spotted a portion of a leg bone exposed on the surface, and when they dug it up, they found the skull underneath.
The type species Aorun zhaoi was named and described in 2013 by Choiniere, Clark, Catherine Forster, Mark Norell, David Eberth, Gregory Erickson, Chuc Hongjun and Xu Xing. The generic name is derived from Mandarin Chinese and is actually a shortened masculine name of Ao Run, who is the Chinese mythical deity, the Dragon King of the West Sea in the epic Journey to the West. The specific name honours Professor Zhao Xijin, who led several important vertebrate paleontological expeditions to the Junggar Basin. Aorun zhaoi is the only species under the genus, which thus is monotypic.
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