Buitreraptor
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Buitreraptor Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 94 Ma |
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| Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Family: | †Dromaeosauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Unenlagiinae |
| Genus: |
†Buitreraptor Makovicky, Apesteguía & Agnolin, 2005 |
| Species: | †B. gonzalezorum |
| Binomial name | |
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Buitreraptor gonzalezorum Makovicky, Apesteguía & Agnolin, 2005 |
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Buitreraptor is a predatory dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous of Argentina.
Buitreraptor was described in 2005. The type species is Buitreraptor gonzalezorum. It was rooster-sized and had a very elongated head with many small teeth.
Buitreraptor was a rather small dinosaur. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated the length at 1.5 metres, the weight at three kilograms.
Buitreraptor has some different physical features than typical northern dromaeosaurs, such as Velociraptor.
Buitreraptor has a slender, flat, extremely elongated snout with many small teeth that lack meat-tearing serrations or cutting edges and are grooved, strongly recurved and flattened. From this, the scientists who initially described it concluded that this dinosaur was not a hunter of relatively large animals like some other dromaeosaurs, but rather a hunter of small animals such as lizards and mammals. The forelimbs of Buitreraptor were long and ending in hands with three fingers. The fingers were proportionarly shorter than in other dromaeosaurids, and of essentially the same length, contrary to most of its relatives, which had fingers of different length, with the second finger being considerably longer.
The body as a whole was also very elongated, with a shallow ribcage. The sickle claw at the second toe of the foot was relatively short and broad.
No fossil discoveries have been made of any feathers of Buitreraptor. However, there are relatives like Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus, of which fossils with preserved feathers are known. Since its close relatives had feathers, it is likely that Buitreraptor also was feathered. According to Apesteguia, this is comparable to reconstructing an extinct monkey with fur because all modern monkeys have fur.
Four skeletons of Buitreraptor were found in 2004 in sandstone in Patagonia, Argentina during an excavation led by Sebastián Apesteguia, researcher of CONICET at the Fundacion Felix de Azara - Maimonides University, and Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago.
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Wikipedia