A totally AWESOME addition to our dinosaur collection

[fossilsonwheels]

I recently added a Dromaeosaurid vertebra to our collection. I honestly did not bother with specs once I got it confirmed as Dromaeosaurid. I never asked size or what formation. I assumed it was from Judith River because it was sold as Dromaeosaurus. i knew it was going to be Dromaeosaurid indet so I was not worried about the specific ID. It is a raptor fossil so I wanted it.

 

The vertebra arrived today and I got two very pleasant surprises. It is bigger than I thought. It is also not from Judith River or the species known from that formation. We got a Dromaeosaurid vertebra from the Hell Creek formation

 

Many of our fossils end up being listed as a indet species. This one went into our official inventory as Dromaeosaurid indet. An indet species gives us some degree of latitude with our programs. I assign species to many of them such as Medusaceratops or Zuul from Judith River so that we can teach the kids dinosaurs they do not know about. When I first saw Hell Creek on the paperwork, I thought "Great, we have a vert to add to our Acheroraptor display which contains a single tooth." I began to think that I should assume it is from Acheroraptor because I had run across a published paper about a reconstruction of Dakotaraptor's tail. I thought it might be a good idea to reread that paper and see what information it provided.

 

Our caudal vert is 5 cm long. Much to my surprise, that is right in the middle of the size range for a Dakotaraptor caudal vertebra according to the reconstruction (if I read the paper right). Now I am not saying this is a Dakotaraptor vertebra. I am nowhere near qualified to make that call. I also doubt I am lucky enough to find a fossil of that species by total accident lol I am also not qualified to say for sure that this is not a Dakotaraptor fossil. As an educator, this gives me a really awesome option.

 

I am now considering that this may be an opportunity to add Dakotaraptor to our program with a fossil that MAY be from the giant raptor. Kids would dig that and it gives us the chance to talk about how the science, and art, of describing dinosaurs works. I think I am going to to print up the paper and give kids the information from it. They can see the fossil and come to their own conclusions. We do this with the lineage of Great White sharks. We show the kids teeth from a GW, a Meg, and a Hastalis. They can make their own conclusions though 80% of the kids the other day believed hastalis is the ancestor of the GW. It was a fun thing to do and it would work very well this fossil too. Dakotaraptor has been high on my list to add but I thought it would be down the road. I do not think there is any problem with introducing this fossil as possibly being from Dakotaraptor. Either way, we added an really cool fossil that I am super stoked about.

 

Here is our Hell Creek Dromaeosaurid indet vert. Is it Acheroraptor or Dakotaraptor ? I am going to let the kids decide which awesome raptor this fossil is from.

[ynot]

[-Andy-]

You are building up a world-class collection mate

[fossilsonwheels]

On 3/15/2019 at 1:24 PM, ynot said:

 

[fossilsonwheels]

19 hours ago, -Andy- said:

You are building up a world-class collection mate

Thank you very much Andy. I am really happy with were we are at. We are adding some super cool items soon too which I am really excited about.