Kayentavenator

Kayentavenator Temporal range: Early Jurassic, 189 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Life restoration
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	Saurischia
Suborder:	Theropoda
Clade:	Tetanurae
Genus:	†Kayentavenator Gay, 2010
Species:	†K. elysiae
Binomial name
Kayentavenator elysiae Gay, 2010

Kayentavenator (meaning "Kayenta hunter") is a small carnivorous dinosaur genus which lived during the Early Jurassic Period; fossils were recovered from the Kayenta Formation of northeastern Arizona and were described in 2010.

The holotype specimen of K. elysiae is a juvenile, as shown by unfused neural spines and would have stood about 0.5 metres (1.6 ft) high at the hip. The adult size of Kayentavenator is unknown. The inclusion of a pubic fenestra is one of the characteristics that Gay uses to set Kayentavenator apart from the contemporaneous, and better known Dilophosaurus. As Dilophosaurus lacks a pubic fenestra as a subadult or an adult, it is unlikely that it had one during any stage of ontogeny. Apomorphies include an ellipsoid acetabulum, the greater trochanter and the head of the femur having been fused, a mediodistal crest that extends 50% of the length of the femur, as well as a prominent accessory condyle on the medial femoral condyle, a groove in dorsal surface of the femoral head that extends out from the centerline of the body, and highly constricted ("waisted") caudal vertebra centra.

The only known fossils of Kayentavenator were excavated by the University of California Museum of Paleontology from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. It was described in 2010 based on a partial fossil skeleton, consisting of part of the pelvis, partial hindlimbs, and vertebrae.