New Dinosaur Tratayenia with claws like Wolverine.

Tratayenia rosalesi

Tratayenia rosalesi is a new mega-raptor dinosaur.  Well, it is newly discovered.  It lived in the mid-Cretaceous Period  between 95-85 million years ago.  It lived in South America and was probably the top predator of its day.  It was kind of like a giant Velociraptor, only its killer claws were on its hands instead of its feet.  It had particularly long first finger claws.  Those two claws were 12 inches long.  That would be 30.5 cm.  This dinosaur also had strong and large arms.  So it did NOT have relatively small arms and claws like a T. rex.  It had large claws on the other fingers, but not as large as those scythe shaped first finger claws.  In fact, those claws made it like a saurian Wolverine.

We don't know, but it may be that ALL raptors had feathers or at least protofeathers.  So I drew Tratayenia with those protofeathers.  It may have been covered only with scales, but raptor dinos have been found where there were feather impressions in the rock around the fossilized bones.

Tratayenia had a rather long flattened snout compared to T. rex or Allosaurus.  It may have been related to the other largeer Theropod dinos that appeared later in South America, like Gigonatosaurus or maybe Carcharodontosuarus.  But Tratayenia was much smaller than these later killers.  Still, at 2425 lbs or 1100 kg . . .  and with a length of 30 feet or 9 meters. . . Tratayenia was not a small animal.

The teeth of Tratayenia were serrated and there were a lot of them.  The bones were hollow like modern bird bones.  This made the dinosaur lighter that it would have been with solid bones.

NOTE:  Printable version of drawing found by clicking on buttons up top labeled either.....
. . . . All Printables. . . .. or. . . . . . Paleontology. . . . . then scroll down to the bottom for this new drawing.  I am posting a couple of drawings from former posts of the other animals mentioned in the above description. 

Velociraptor in the Gobi Desert

Gigonatosaurus on the Prowl

Carcharodontosaurus