An artist’s impression of Dornraptor normani. Image credit: Megan Williams.
SciNews brings word of a new dinosaur discovered in England. Dornraptor normani lived about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic Period, near what is now Dorset, England. The animal belongs to a group called the averostrans, which includes most theropod dinosaurs. The discovery was published in the paper "A new name for old bones: A reassessment of Early Jurassic theropod remains from Dorset, England" in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica.
“Originally this material was referred to the early armored ornithischian taxon Scelidosaurus harrisonii, which had also been recovered from a Lower Jurassic Formation in Southern England,” the paleontologist wrote.
“However, this error in assignment was soon realized and corrected in subsequent works, and the material in question reclassified as an indeterminate theropod.”
“More recent works have suggested possible neotheropod or even tetanuran affinities for at least some of this material, but no consensus has yet been reached about its true phylogenetic and taxonomic affinities.”
“The material has never been formally named, even though the material does appear to display a distinct combination of anatomical characteristics.”
