HARROW: Researchers have identified a huge giant raptor fossil dating back 66 million years and would have walked in the western Dakotas. Discovered in far northwestern South Dakota, it has been named Dakotaraptor.
The fossil from the Hell Creek Formation is believed to be nearly 17 feet long, which has made it one of the largest raptors or dinosaur specimen with wings ever discovered in the world.
Raptors got popularized by ‘Jurassic Park’ movies, and are famous for being fast, nimble, small dinosaurs with stiff tails and feet having wicked sickle-like claws of 10 inches.
Dakotaraptor would have been quite big to fly but feathers would make it the biggest dinosaur found with wings till date.
A partial skeleton of the raptor was discovered in Harding County, SD, part of the formation that is among the more intensely researched dinosaur fossil sites. The site includes parts of the eastern Montana Badlands, northwestern South Dakota, and southwestern North Dakota.
The age of the formation ranges from nearly 65 million to 70 million years old and came into in a delta that has a warm and moist climate.
Co-author the paper that outlined and revealed the find late past week, Kansas University paleontologist David Burnham, said, “This new predatory dinosaur fills the body size gap between smaller theropods and large tyrannosaurs that lived at this time”.
Lead researcher and author Robert DePalma led the expedition to South Dakota. He is the guardian of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in West Palm Beach, Fla.
